Unionists Daniel Urai and Felix Anthony have returned after several weeks of meetings in Australia and New Zealand to rally support from unions there against the disempowering of public sector unions by the military--led regime.

Urai, the President of the Fiji Trades Union Congress and Felix Anthony, the General Secretary, arrived on Monday, 25 July.

FIJI TRADES UNION CONGRESS
32 DES VOUEX ROAD, P.O. BOX 1418, SUVA, FIJI
PRESIDENT: Daniel Urai
NATIONAL SECRETARY: Felix Anthony

DATE: 22/07/11
PRESS RELEASE ON ALLEGATIONS RE FNPF

The Regime continues to make personal allegations on Mr. Daniel Urai and myself. These allegations appear on all media outlets in Fiji and in the Fiji Sun, FM96, Fijilive, Fiji Village and FBCL with much vigor. Yet our media releases are not allowed to be published or aired on the radio. We ask what is there to hide from the public by disallowing our FTUC media releases.

If the regime is honest in its conduct, then there should be nothing to hide from the public. We now urge the Regime to allow free media so that we can have a constructive and open debate on all issues. The citizens of Fiji should be allowed to make a free and fair judgment on these issues.

In relation to the Regime's claims on payment of allowances to Board Members of FNPF and other related Boards, we say any payment that were made to Board Members were in accordance with the Rules and longstanding Government policy. We deny that we made payments to ourselves as claimed. All payments were handled by Management and were subject to Audit, hence the Audit Report to which the government is continuously referring to. No Audit Report cast any doubt or claims that payments were out of order. We understand that this debate can go on without any resolution and the public would never get to know the real truth.

In the public interest, I am prepared to disclose all my bank records and tax returns which must be subject to an independent audit to ascertain the real facts provided the Prime Minister and the Attorney General are prepared to do the same. Let’s find out where the real abuse is and who has been paying who what.

There is no value in attempting to defame people or fool people. The citizens of Fiji need the truth and its time the Regime opened its books to the people who pay. After all the regime was to clean up, and being transparent would be a good way to start, albeit five years late.

The real issue in question is the violation of workers’ rights. The regime is  sidestepping the issue by making baseless personal allegations. It’s time that we concentrated on real issues.

FELIX ANTHONY
NATIONAL SECRETARY