COMMISSIONER Northern Lieutenant-Colonel Ilai Moceica yesterday challenged the Cakaudrove Provincial Council meeting to do away with the kerekere syndrome in villages.
He told the council at Yaroi Village in Savusavu that resources available in their villages and districts were more than enough to allow the iTaukei community to live in a wealthy and prosperous society.
Lt-Col Moceica urged district reps to adapt the new Joshua Theory plan which outlines the eradication of the syndrome of kerekere, which means to beg or ask in the iTaukei language.
We need to get rid of the kerekere lifestyle we have in our villages and learn to be self reliant. That is something the government is doing right now to help our people stand on their own feet and learn to support themselves, he said.
You can keep asking for things but will you ever learn to be independent. If I am helping a person by supplying them with fish for their meals, I am not helping them.
To help them, what I will do is give them fishing lines and teach them how to fish so they can support themselves and their families.
Lt-Col Moceica said one way of eradicating the dependant lifestyle was to have the resource owners sell directly to the market.
From the producers to the market and not through the middlemen because they buy at a lower price from producers and sell at a higher price to the market. I want the producers and resource owners to reap the full reward of their hard work and get a good price from the market they will supply, Lt-Col Moceica said.
He said the iTaukei community needed to realise the opportunities they had in maintaining a steady income from readily available resources.