I was horrified to hear the PM say it’s only $8.1M - Fong

President of the Organizations for People Living with Disabilities, Elizabeth Fong says she was horrified to hear Prime Minister, Sitiveni Rabuka say that it's only $8.1 million to pay for the gazetted increases for MPs.

While speaking at the National Rally for Workers and Communities at the Suva Civic Centre, Fong says their organization was only given a budget of $300,000 in this financial year.

She says the recent decision made by the Parliamentarians means that they have not heard what the people are saying as no public consultation was done.

She says they are the ones that voted the Parliamentarians in to do justice for the people.

Fong says she always likes to talk about the minimum/living wage, and she thinks that the living wages can be set for the different sectors taking into consideration the employers and employees.

Fong also questions how the 22 organizations under their umbrella will operate well with the $300,000 budget that was allocated for them in this financial year.

She says people living with disabilities comprise 13.7 percent of our population, but they get less than 1 percent of the budget for that group of people.

She adds that this is based on physical disability, but there are a lot of psycho-social issues which is not caught in the research they are working on.

The second People's Rally will be held at Suva's Thurston Gardens from 9am this Saturday.