The importance of great leadership cannot be understated in the Fiji Revenue and Customs Authority’s book of success.

Yesterday marked the beginning of the seven months journey for 20 participants from the Solomon Islands, New Caledonia and Fiji.

A workshop will be held for one week at FRCA’s Training room while the overall programme will last for 7 months.

FRCA chief executive officer, Visvanath Das officially launched the Pacific Leadership Programme (PLP) at the FRCA Regional Training Centre.

“We are here because we are all leaders in our respective organizations. Not leaders because of our titles, but leaders due to our ability and willingness to learn how to make changes for the better. Because this is what leaders do, the pursuit of a better person, organisation, community, nation and world,” said Mr Das.

“For FRCA, I have found that the programme truly sets people up for success and delivers great value to the organisation. This correlates with PLP survey results, which indicate a positive impact on participants and their organisations in the past few years.

“It is my sincere hope that you will also be able to realise a similar impact on your own lives and in your organisations and communities; that you will share the learnings with your colleagues so that they can also improve.

“For when the best leader’s work is done the people will say, ‘We did it ourselves’.”

He added the programme is to provide the participants tools to assist them as individuals and their teams, to build consensus and common goals to work towards achieving those goals.

Local participants are from the Fiji Police Force, Bio-Security Authority of Fiji and Immigration of Fiji.

According to Mr Das, the New Zealand Customs Service and McCormack and Associates will be facilitating the workshop.

The 2017 Pacific Leadership programme was jointly organized by the Fiji Revenue & Customs Authority and the New Zealand Customs Service.

“At the outset, let me take this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude to the New Zealand government for the strong commitment you continue to make to this programme. FRCA and other participating organisations have been extremely fortunate in the past few years to be able to send potential leaders to this training,

New Zealand High Commissioner, Mark Ramsden said the purpose of this programme was to build leadership capability in the Pacific region.

Fiji Police Force participant, Mesake Waqa said: “It is important for us coming from a law enforcement agency in the country. On top of that I come from the criminal investigations background and taking part in this program will help us in the investigation aspect.”

Edited by: Ivamere Nataro

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