Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, Strategic Planning, National Development and Statistics, Biman Prasad [Source: Parliament of Fiji/ Facebook]

The Adaptive Social Protection Strategy aims to help the government improve its social protection systems to provide timely aid to poor and vulnerable households during natural disasters and economic crises.

This was stated by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, Strategic Planning, National Development, and Statistics, Biman Prasad, while responding to a question posed in parliament.

The strategy and its implementation plan will guide the integration and harmonization of existing social protection programs and new interventions, making them inclusive as well as adaptive and responsive.

The Deputy Prime Minister says the World Bank has provided technical and financial support for various activities for the strategy.

“Under the social protection response system development project, the World Bank provided technical and financial support to various activities, including the design of the strategy that we know was approved by the cabinet, and again, the financing from the World Bank was secured.”

Prasad adds that the main objective behind the strategy was to expand social assistance benefits and reach out to vulnerable communities.

“The main idea behind this strategy is to expand, particularly approach one to expand social protection assistance benefits and to reach disaster-hit communities, and the important issue with respect to the strategy is to look at how the country is prepared to address the most vulnerable, which get affected the most during disasters.”

The opposition member of parliament, Naisa Tuinaceva, has stressed the principles that are associated with the implementation plan.

“My understanding of social protection is that it is founded on certain principles, and you know one of them is equality and non-discrimination.”

The Minister for Finance adds that there will be no form of discrimination under the protection services.