The Minister for Waterways Mahendra Reddy has commissioned the fourth national waterworks project.

It will be carried out at Nakauvadra River in Ra in the coming months.

The commissioning was held at the Rakiraki Muslim Primary School  yesterday.

It follows the commissioning of waterworks at Labasa, Sigatoka and Rewa earlier this year.

“The wait is now over, the ministry is planning to work closely with the community to mitigate the risks flooding poses to the communities at large and is banking on your support in future,” Mr Reddy told the people of Rakiraki.

He said they plan to educate the communities around the Rakiraki area on safe farming practices, highlighting the risks of littering in waterways and other related factors that contributed to flooding are in the ministry’s agenda for the coming year.

Given the economic significance Rakiraki had in terms of its contribution to the national economy, Mr Reddy stressed the importance of safeguarding the main business centre of Ra province.

“The total length of debris and re-section works is 3.5kilometres, 1.0km upstream of town bridge and 2.5km downstream of the town bridge respectively,” he said.

“The total project cost is $1.36million and the duration of this project is four months.”

The core business in the area is mainly commercial as well as agriculture (sugar, dalo and kava).

Sugarcane farming is the dominant agriculture commodity within the Rakiraki municipality urban and semi-urban, with approximately 200 hectares.

“Rakiraki town flooding has existed for a long time because of many factors such as poor farming practices and soil erosion in catchment areas that have elevated the river bed level over the years.”

This increase in river bed levels in turn plays a major role during floods in and around the Rakiraki municipality areas which has a population of more than 4000 people.

But now with the commissioning of their new waterways project Mr Reddy said it would basically solve around 80 to 90 per cent of these flooding problems.

Mr Reddy said this was also an indication of how the Fiji Government made it their priority in fulfilling their promises to the people of Fiji.

Sivam Digging Works Answers

Noble Call

Sivam Digging Works managing director Anand Sivam said they were honoured and overwhelmed when given the contract to conduct waterworks operations in the Rakiraki area.

“This is indeed an honour for us to be given this opportunity to be involved in something that will benefit thousands of Fijians living in the Rakiraki area,” Mr Sivam said.

“The four-month deadline given by Government was not an issue for them because they could get the job done by then.

“We can manage, provided that the weather conditions remains favorable for us, but we are just grateful to the Fijian Government for giving us this opportunity.”

Edited by Percy Kean

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