During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre (FWCC) worked with the Health Ministry to remove domestic violence survivors from perpetrators.
This was shared by FWCC counsellor supervisor Shobna Devi at a Fiji Women Lawyers Association-FWCC Gender Equality and Women’s Lived Realities event in Suva last Friday.
She said there were a lot of cases where the counsellors had to liaise with the Health Ministry to remove women and children from their homes.
“The counsellors then call the Ministry of Health, liaise with the police and it was not an easy task,” Ms Devi said.
“During COVID, most of the resources we know were stretched, it was so difficult to even arrange for transport to go and get the survivor from her house.
“The counsellors would call the police to ensure that police have reached the survivor’s place and the survivor was picked up and there were borders, containment areas.”
Ms Devi said they had a case where a survivor and her eight children were stuck and needed to be moved. She said they also had to provide temporary shelters for some of the survivors.
