Most of the men in this village are fishermen and this is going to be the first time they will be selling fish as they now have solar freezers as storage units.

The new one unit solar freezers handed to vil­lagers of Doi in Ono-i-Lau, Lau will improve their livelihood and generate in­come for them.

The purpose of the solar-powered freezer is to provide proper storage for marine commodities which will fur­ther boost market availability and access.

Village headman, Mataika Pasi said the villagers who had been suffering for the past two years were excited about the positive prospects of this devlopment.

“The source of income for our village is through sales of Magimagi and Copra.

Now we only sell magimagi because the cyclones that have been hitting Fiji have re­ally affected our coconut sup­ply,” Mr Pasi said.

“We are happy that the Min­istry of Fisheries is giving us solar freezers because now we can store and fish. Most of the men in this village are fishermen but this is going to be the first time we will be selling fish as we now have so­lar freezers.

“This solar freezer will re­ally help us and we want to thank the Ministry of Fisher­ies for thinking of us as we are very far away from Suva.”

Minister for Fisheries, Semi Koroilavesau said the solar freezers would be for villages that had little or no fresh wa­ter.

“For the Lau group the pilot for this project is Udu Village in Totoya and Doi Village in Ono-i-Lau. There will be two for western outer islands and two in the Northern outer is­lands,” Mr Koroilavesau said.

“There will be a total of 40 units of solar freezers that will be distributed to the out­er islands that we have identi­fied.

“For 2019-2020 we plan to help the rural areas in any­way we can.

“We will provide the market for the fish and we will come and pick the fish from the vil­lage. We will continue to com­municate to see when to come and to do our pick up.”

Edited by Percy Kean

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