Shania Shayal Prasad 
Finance Minister, Professor Biman Prasad. [Source: Fiji Government/ Facebook]
Deputy Prime Minister Professor Biman Prasad says mismatched policies by the previous government have greatly affected Fiji.
He says the previous government, without any consultation, introduced an education curriculum that was more akin to social engineering, where pass marks were heavily scaled, forcing more tertiary institution enrollments.
Prasad says there was lower or no employment at the other end of the spectrum, forcing students and their parents or guardians to default on loan repayments to the State that were taken to pay for their tertiary education.
“Our national workforce planning capability was not in step with tertiary education opportunities and unemployment statistics. Our technical and vocational facilities were set up and then suddenly disbanded, forcing the unemployment of staff and creating huge uncertainty for students. Our forced retirement age policy, unfair pension fund contributions, and short-term contracts within the civil service.”
Prasad adds that all this had a cascading effect, leading to a lack of morale, low productivity, and disjointed policies, chaos, and confusion.
He adds that the Coalition Government is fully determined to roll back all the policy incompetence that the nation has had to endure for the past 16 years.
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