While concerns are being raised on the presence of drugs in schools, the Ministry of Education Permanent Secretary stresses the importance of a balanced approach, focusing on education and prevention rather than resorting to drastic measures that might undermine the school environment.

Selina Kuruleca highlighted this while making submissions before the Public Accounts Committee on 2022 Audit Report on the Social Services Sector when questioned on introducing K-9 units in schools.

“The availability of canine units at our schools, this is something that we had requested the Fiji Police Force in March this year, just randomly placed at big schools or red spots, red zones, and unfortunately they don’t have the capacity presently to be able to do that. So the agreement with the Fiji Police is that at every major sporting event where our children are present, they can go there because a lot of children and adults are congregated at the same place”

Ministry of Education Permanent Secretary, Selina Kuruleca

Kuruleca says the Ministry is also looking to address the root causes of drug use.

“The other issue that the Fiji Police Force had brought up was there are some young people, a majority of the students in our schools are not involved. The current statistics we have, 1.7% of the entire student population, 1.7% of 207,000, have a reported case of illicit or illicit drug use. So about 98% of them haven’t touched it, so in a way, we need to look for creative ideas, absolutely”

Kuruleca says the Ministry is planning a series of stakeholder task force meetings, with the next one scheduled to continue formulating effective strategies in collaboration with other government ministries and organizations.