10 Women Graduate With Carpentry Certificates
Ten women in a rural settlement in Ra who graduated in a carpentry training centre programme recently, highlighted the fact that only 30 per cent of women in Fiji take up vocational and technical training.
Minister for Women, Children and Poverty Alleviation, Mereseini Vuniwaqa said: “I am sure that if we looked much closer we will find that females will only be graduating from cooking, sewing, and other vocational and technical training which fit in with society’s views of what a woman’s role is.
“Your graduating from carpentry training today therefore is something to celebrate.
“You are actually contributing and enhancing my ministry’s aim of attaining our national goal towards gender equality and the empowerment of women.”
Ms Vuniwaqa said this during the closing ceremony of Tokaimalo Carpentry Training at the Saivou village in Saivou, Ra on Friday.
About 65 participants graduated from the one-week training in general carpentry.
“I urge you to go out there and make use of the skills you have been taught.
“I also ask your male colleagues here and community elders to give you the space and the encouragement needed to enable you to put your newly learnt skills to good use,” she said.
Ms Vuniwaqa said gender equality and the empowerment of women could not be achieved without the much needed social support from the local communities and from homes.
“I must also thank them for engaging women in this training, especially because carpentry is too often seen as a ‘man’s job’,” Ms Vuniwaqa said.
“In a world where women are business owners, engineers, police officers, educators, astronauts, military officers, truck drivers, air force pilots and farmers, we rarely hear of a woman who is a carpenter.”
Ms Vuniwaqa said Fiji was fast developing and the Fijian women were adapting to the changes just as quickly.
“It is very timely that we introduce them to skills that were traditionally the niche’ of men and involve them as equal players in every field,” she said.
Edited by Rusiate Mataika
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