The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Justice, Law and Human Rights are this week holding public consultations on the Sex Offenders Registry Bill.

The Sex Offenders Registry Bill aims to propose legislation that all convicted sex offenders are registered on a data base which will be held with the Police Commissioner and the Commissioner of Corrections Service.

Committee Chair, Alvick Maharaj says some of the queries raised from submitters is the life-time registration as well as whether the registry would act as a deterrence for would-be offenders.

The committee have already held consultations in Vunidawa, Korovou, Rakiraki and Tavua and in Ba yesterday with a scheduled session today at the Lautoka City Council before wrapping up in Nadi tomorrow.

“The concerns is not actually directly related to the Bill but more so is to how our society is behaving at this point in time and the number of people actually committing this kind of crime so more so it was a concern of how we can actually stop this kind of cases from occurring in the first place”

Meanwhile, the committee is also holding simultaneous public consultations on the Public Enterprise Bill.

On Friday, the committee will be in Nadi to hear from Fiji Airports on the public enterprise bill which was tabled last week in Parliament and focuses on the review of 11 public enterprises.