“You would have also seen fathers living on the streets and I wonder where their children are.”
These were the sentiments of Minister for Women, Children and Poverty Alleviation, Mereseini Vuniwaqa who took to the streets of Suva City on Father’s Day morning and took with her five helpless people who were living on the streets.
Vuniwaqa says among the people taken off the streets include a teenage girl who has a month old baby, an eighty year old woman and a man who says he comes to sleep on the streets because his house is too full.
Vuniwaqa says these people are currently undergoing a medical check up at the St Giles Hospital.
She says some families have a history of living on the streets and their children and grandchildren continue to do that.
These people will later be relocated to places which are run by NGO’s who look after such people.
Vuniwaqa says some have been relocated previously through the Loloma Project, but for one reason or another they keep returning to the streets and its now an attempt to see what that reason is and see how they can remove that reason so these people do not live on the streets any more.
Vuniwaqa says the Loloma Project is a program run by the Ministry and is here to stay and is covered under the Memorandum of Understanding between the Ministry and the Fiji Police Force.
