A-G: Transparency Key For Govt
Government has heightened the level of transparency to an extent where Cabinet ministers’ annual salaries have been made known to the public.
Attorney-General and Minister for Economy Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum said that previous Governments didn’t do such things.
He was responding to questions during the 2018-2019 National Budget roadshow at Votualevu College in Nadi on Thursday night.
Mr Sayed- Khaiyum said even his salary was made known to the public.
“My salary has been declared every year, it’s always published, read the papers,” he said.
“I don’t know which other Government has ever done this or even had their ministers’ salary published in the papers.
“My assets are published, it’s required by law now and you get to know how much my wife owns, how much my wife makes and how much my children have. When you talk about transparency, that is the level of transparency we have,” he added.
Government, Mr Sayed–Khaiyum said, they were always transparent with the manner in which they carried out their policies making sure that everyone was assisted.
“You want to know on a daily basis how much we spend, the budget book tells you exactly how much money a ministry is spending,” he said.
“We have the Public Accounts Committee and Office of the Auditor-General to review the expenditure.”
Meanwhile, members of the public at the roadshow expressed their joy on Government’s investment in the education sector.
Wish
An employee of Air Terminal Services, Brij Dutt, 38, said after he graduated from university it was hard for him to find a job and he ended up on the streets doing nothing.
“I only wished we had such initiatives under previous governments. It was really rare to see a student studying under a scholarship and some people were able to find jobs straight after high school because they had connections,” he said.
“I want to thank this Government for introducing free education because now I know that my children will be able to study in any tertiary institution they want.”
Primary School Head Teacher Sherina Riyaz said she had seen the impact of Government’s education policies on her students now compared with previous years.
“We are really happy with this TELS programmes because we know our students will be able to have a good future and our children too will study programmes which were hard for parents to pay for in the past such as medicine, flying school and so on,” she added.
Edited by Epineri Vula
