LAZINESS, incompetence and corruption within the iTaukei Land Trust Board (TLTB) will not be tolerated.
This was the warning from Prime Minister Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama to staff of TLTB as he opened their Strategic Planning Corporate Workshop on Monday. Commodore Bainimarama said cases of TLTB staff not meeting the standards demanded of them would not be tolerated.
"We hear cases of abuse of office by TLTB staff out in the field. Cases of extortion, of making promises to lessees that the TLTB staff know they cannot or will not fulfil," Commodore Bainimarama said.
He said there were further cases in which staff gave false encouragement to landowners and cases where they deprived landowners of their dues.
"Some staff members have let the team down," Commodore Bainimarama said.
"In fact, staff members have recently been fired because they breached their fiduciary duty to the landowners.
"On Friday night, I told our civil servants what I'll repeat here, we expect the highest standards of performance and priority."
In his final statement on the matter, Commodore Bainimarama did not mince his words.
"We will not tolerate laziness or incompetence and anyone who is corrupt will be found out and dealt with," he stated.
Commodore Bainimarama also made reference to other in-house problems faced by TLTB, saying they must be rectified as soon as possible.
He said these problems included a woefully out of date landowner database, a lack of understanding of the TLTB mission and a lack of willingness to further develop land usage in Fiji.
TLTB general manager Alipate Qetaki welcomed the PM's comments, saying they would bode well for the organisation.