Assistant Minister for Women, Children, and Social Protection, Sashi Kiran

Assistant Minister for Women Sashi Kiran says a number of initiatives are being undertaken to encourage more women to take part in the upcoming local government elections.

Kiran says they have raised concerns about lack of women in the current pool of municipal council administrators.

However, she says these administrators are only in office until the elections are held.

She adds through workshops in collaboration with Washington-based International Republican Institute they are expecting a strong women’s participation in the future.

“Go to each towns, have planning meetings, encourage women, find out from them what their obstacles are and we providing lot of capacity building hoping that more women will contest, and hopefully we will have a more balanced town council going forward.”

The Ministry has launched a recruitment drive last year for women leaders across Fiji who want to participate in the council elections.