With the United Nations Oceans Conference com­ing up in less than a month, the Minister for Fisher­ies and Oceans Champion Semi Koroilavesau has led the charge in cleaning the foreshores around the country, as our contribution in keeping the ocean clean.

Mr Koroilavesau yesterday led staff from his ministry in clean­ing up the foreshore area near the Bowling Club in Suva.

This will be a weekly feature until the conference which is being co-hosted by Fiji and Sweden in New York.

“We have about a month to go be­fore the Oceans Conference in New York, which is on 5 June and as a ministry responsible for oceans, and joined by the Ministry of Forests, we would make some ini­tiatives to contribute to the Oceans Conference in June.

“We decided that we will start by cleaning the shoreline which is starting today and we will do every Wednesday till the 5th of June.”

Mr Koroilavesau intends to in­volve other Government depart­ments in this initiative.

“We are going to ask other Gov­ernment departments, other min­istries; we are going to seek the assistance of the Permanent Sec­retaries and all Government sta­tions around Fiji for them to try and generate interest from Gov­ernment workers and public itself.

“This will also show our young people the need to change their mentality and that we need to clean the rubbish, especially plas­tic, bottles and similar things.”

His team also targeted rubbish along the roads, which gets swept into drains, from where it flows into the Ocean.

Fiji led the charge in initiating an Oceans Conference which works on the target set in the Sustainable Development Goal 14.

SDG 14 deals with the need to fo­cus on oceans and its resources be­fore it is too late.

Prime Minister Voreqe Baini­marama will be co-chairing the Oceans Conference.

Edited by Caroline Ratucadra

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