Excessive use of mobile phones is among the most pressing issues fac­ing the iTaukei race today, says Bau chief Ratu Epenisa Cakobau.

In an interview at the conclusion of the Great Council of Chiefs first convention after 16 years, in which issues concerning Fiji’s indigenous iTaukei people were dis­cussed, Ratu Epenisa said mobile phones now pose a big problem in every home.

“We are losing that…you know, when you come home, you sit with your family, we talk, and we chat. Phones are now being used instead. So family discussions where we talk about the welfare of the family, the goods and the bad, that no longer happens. So we’ve lost that. Now we just have kids sit­ting in the corner there playing with their phones,” Ratu Epenisa said.

“So, it’s the freedom [that comes with mo­bile phones], because you wouldn’t know who your children are talking to. If that is controlled, it would be good.”

The iTaukei community face a range of so­cio-economic issues, the extent of which is unclear because the previous government’s de-segregation policies banned race-based demographic surveys.

In 2021, a Fiji Bureau of Statistics Housing Income and Expenditure Survey 2019-2020 revealed that of the 30 per cent of Fiji’s pop­ulation living in poverty, 75 per cent were iTaukei.

Ratu Epenisa cautioned against the gener­alisation of iTaukei welfare, arguing that they were resource owners and therefore should not be “poor”.

“We (GCC) are aware of what’s happening and how people are saying we’re poor. We’re definitely not poor. We’re owners of this land – we have the land, we have the qoliqoli. It’s just a matter of managing it well,” he said.

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Story By: dionisia@fijisun.com.fj