1. GEORGIAN AMBASSADOR PRESENTS CREDENTIAL – In line with the Look North Policy and Pillar 11 of the People’s Charter for Change, Peace and Progress, Fiji is now receiving accreditation from more countries.
2. WORKSHOP TO IDENTIFY PRIORITY ACTIVITIES – Participants from government departments and development partners met during the Post Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA) prioritization workshop today.
3. MALICIOUS CALLS CONCERN NFA – National Fire Authority (NFA) is concerned with members of the public making malicious or prank calls to the authority.
1. GEORGIAN AMBASSADOR PRESENTS CREDENTIAL
In line with the Look North Policy and Pillar 11 of the People’s Charter for Change, Peace and Progress, Fiji is now receiving accreditation from more countries.
Today the Georgian non-resident ambassador, Vladimir Konstantinidi presented his credentials to the President, His Excellency Ratu Epeli Nailatikau at Government House.
Mr Konstantinidi, who is also accredited to Australia, is the first Georgian Ambassador to Fiji stemming from Fiji and Georgia establishing diplomatic ties in 2010 upon a request from the latter.
He has served in many spheres of Georgia’s civil service, especially pertaining to the area of law as he did his studies in the Faculty of Law, Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University.
Mr Konstantinidi has worked in the Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs, Ministry of Tax Revenue, Ministry of Finance and then at Ministry of Foreign Affairs whereby he was promoted to diplomatic postings.
He served as the Charge d’ Affairs in Embassy of Georgia to the State of Israel and received his first posting as ambassador to the Republic of Cyprus.
The Georgian Government has awarded six Fiji students scholarships to study medicine at the Tbilisi State Medical University earlier this year through the Public Service Commission.
Fiji Ambassador to Brussels, His Excellency Ambassador Peceli Vocea is accredited to Georgia.
Pillar 11 emphaseises government’s intent of enhancing global integration and international relations.
-ENDS-
2. WORKSHOP TO IDENTIFY PRIORITY ACTIVITIES
Participants from government departments and development partners met during the Post Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA) prioritization workshop today.
They reviewed suggested PDNA activities for each sector and prioritised implementation plans by order of magnitude and financial commitment.
Speaking to more than 30 participants while opening the workshop, the Ministry for Rural and Maritime Development and National Disaster Management permanent secretary, Filipe Alifereti said the PDNA now featured significant loss dimension due to a natural disaster as well as taking stock of physical damage to property, infrastructure and productive assets.
Mr Alifereti said the workshop would also assist in identifying financial gaps to better assist people affected by disasters.
“The objectives are to draft a consolidated list of priority activities, identifying the funded portions and funding gaps as well as committing to an implementation and reporting schedule,” the permanent secretary said.
“The outcome of the workshop will form the basis of the Resourcing Needs Framework, which the Minister for National Disaster Management will present to Cabinet for consideration.”
He added that a very important outcome of the day-long workshop would be to identify some cost efficient methods that could be put in place quickly and add value to the disaster risk reduction initiatives currently underway.
-ENDS-
3. MALICIOUS CALLS CONCERN NFA
National Fire Authority (NFA) is concerned with members of the public making malicious or prank calls to the authority.
Last week on Wednesday at 0957hrs, NFA received a call that there was a property fire in Nasese and upon arrival of the fire brigade from Suva Fire Station there was no fire at the location.
NFA chief executive officer John O’Connor is again urging members of the public not to make malicious or prank calls.
The NFA chief highlighted that malicious call resulted in two fire tenders being deployed to the site. Attending to malicious calls can be disastrous as our ability to attend other fire calls are affected.
“Furthermore, responding to such malicious fire calls is very costly for NFA,” Mr O’Connor said.
“NFA is taking such malicious calls seriously and are conducting investigations to try and trace the call before officially reporting the matter to the Police for further investigation.
“We humbly request people to stop making prank calls and support NFA reduce the number of property fires in the country,” Mr O’Connor added.
-ENDS-