The Fiji Labour Party has calling for a thorough investigation into the budgetary allocation of $1 million to bail out the Pacific Polytechnic Limited.
FLP Leader and former Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry said that this troubled institution is closely connected to former Fiji National University Vice Chancellor, Dr Ganesh Chand.
Chaudhry said Government explanations fall far short of the requisite standards of accountability and transparency.
He said FLP is also surprised at how glibly the Prime Minister defends the $200,000 allocation to the Global Girmit Institute by Finance Minister Biman Prasad to hold an international Girmit conference.
Chaudhry said that: “Does the Prime Minister know that the money was being given to an institute that was deregistered last year because it had not submitted its audited accounts and annual reports over a period of five years, in fact ever since its inception in 2017?”
“The Trustees of the Institute, in this case Dr Ganesh Chand and the Minister’wife, were grossly irresponsible in their prolonged failure to submit audited accounts of the Institute to the register.”
He highlighted that a substantial amount was allocated and that the country is still waiting for an account despite promises from the Government.
Chaudhry questioned whether the Prime Minister bothers to find out how the GGI was astonishingly granted re-registration within 24 hours of lodging its application in February this year?
“In our books, the GGI is not a lawfully reinstated charitable trust and should not have been entrusted with $200,000 of tax payer’s money.”
“It is very clear that the unlawful and rather hasty attempt to ‘re-register’ the defunct GGI was to enable it to benefit financially from the $200,000 allocated for an international conference for the Girmit celebrations.
“The entire nation can see how the whole process was engineered to benefit certain persons closely associated with the Minister,” he added.
