The Registration of Sex Offenders Bill 2018 is expected to be debated and voted upon in the April sitting of Parliament.
This is after the motion by the Acting Prime Minister and Attorney General, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum for the bill to be considered by parliament without delay and it be immediately referred to the Standing Committee of Justice, Law and Human Rights was agreed to without any opposition.
Sayed-Khaiyum also moved that the Standing Committee must report on the bill to parliament in the April sitting of Parliament and upon the presentation of the report of the bill by the Standing Committee, the bill must be debated and voted upon by Parliament.
He says that Registration of Sex Offenders Bill is a new law and government seeks to have it endorsed by parliament on an urgent basis.
The Acting Prime Minister also highlighted in parliament the statistics released by the Office of the DPP as of December 2017 indicated a total of 227 people charged with a total of 444 separate counts of serious sexual offences with the youngest victim of sexual offences aged 1 year 10 months.
He says unfortunately for many sex offenders they cannot easily be identified by society.
Sayed-Khaiyum also says there is an urgent need to intervene and create an avenue to curtail this serious growing concern in Fiji.
He says the bill requires sex offenders to report relevant personal information about themselves for inclusion in the register.
Sayed-Khaiyum adds the registration and periodic reporting of sex offenders will also facilitate the investigation and prosecution of any future sexual offences and releasing the information by sex offenders to public agencies and the general public will assist in protecting public safety.
We will have more on this later today.
