Independent parliamentarian Premila Kumar

Independent parliamentarian Premila Kumar says the resources used to pay the new Ministers and Assistant Ministers could have been put to better use.

“The funds wasted on this bloated cabinet could have been used to address urgent national needs – supporting families devastated by recent floods, addressing chronic shortages of medicines in hospitals, providing free bus fares for citizens aged 60 and above, repairing the country’s crumbling roads and bridges,” she said, in the wake of Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka’s announcement Friday of New Ministers and Assistant Ministers from the Group of 9.

“Instead, this government has chosen to serve its own interests while ordinary Fijians suffer.

“If the current ministers and assistant ministers were delivering results, why expand the cabinet? “The answer is clear: they aren’t. “This expansion is an admission of failure. Rather than reshuffling or removing non-performers, the Prime Minister has doubled down on inefficiency, rewarding incompetence with reduced workloads with same pay.

“To make matters worse, these unbudgeted appointments will drain resources from critical projects, as funds are redirected to sustain this bloated structure. This is poor governance, plain and simple—a direct insult to taxpayers who are already struggling to cope with rising costs and declining public services.”

While announcing Ioane Naivaluru as new Minister for Policing, Viliame Naupoto as Immigration Minister and Mosese Bulitavu as Environment and Climate Change Minister, the PM assured Fijians that the salaries would be funded in the 2024-2025 national budget and would not burden taxpayers.

Rabuka also announced three new assistant ministers: Aliki Bia for Information, Ratu Josaia Niudamu for Justice, and Naisa Tuinaceva for Public Works and Transport.