![Fiji Bureau of Statistics CEO, Kemueli Naiqama. [Image: Ministry of Rural Development/Twitter]](https://www.fijivillage.com/news_images/128597186561415e45fb03c5e50c16.jpg)
The CEO of the Fiji Bureau of Statistics, Kemueli Naiqama has been sacked.
A government statement now says the Ministry of Economy, through the Acting Permanent Secretary, Shiri Goundar has terminated the contract of the CEO of the Fiji Bureau of Statistics, for failure to comply with Section 5 of the Statistics Act 1961.
The statement says in an unfortunate blow to the Bureau’s credibility, Naiqama endorsed the publication of unverifiable information in the Housing Income and Expenditure Survey 2019-2020 relating to ethnicity and religion – data that was revealed to be extrapolated from erroneous sources and which exceeded the established scope of the survey’s data collection.
It says by exceeding the scope of data collection and ignoring fact-based methodology, Naiqama breached the terms of his contract with the Ministry.
Under his employment contract, Naiqama will be paid all salary and accrued entitlements for the period up to 15th September 2021.
We have received information that some officials escorted Naiqama out of his office earlier this afternoon.
Calls made to his office were referred to the Ministry of Economy.
Last night, Minister for Economy, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum raised serious concerns about the ethnic and religious data released by the Fiji Bureau of Statistics in the 2019-2020 Household Income and Expenditure Survey.
Sayed-Khaiyum says CEO of the Fiji Bureau of Statistics has not acted in line with government policy and the law.
The Minister says there was a sample of 6,000 households from 199,688 households which is 3 percent of the population. He says the question that needs to be asked is how was the sample size derived from the 6,000 households on the basis of ethnicity.
Sayed-Khaiyum says the 2017 census data was used as a survey frame although the 2017 census had no reliable ethnic data, which make these statistics unreliable.
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The Attorney General says the report is flawed.
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We have been unable to get comments from Naiqama.
Under the Statistics Act 1961 which was updated in 2016, the Minister for Economy appoints the Government Statistician.
Section 5 of the Act also says that with the approval and following the direction of the Minister for Economy, the Government Statistician shall collect statistics relating to any matter listed in a schedule in the act.
The Fiji Bureau of Statistics 2019-2020 Household Income and Expenditure Survey confirms 29.9 percent of Fijians, or about 258,000 individuals in 45,724 households, lived under the Basic Needs Poverty Line of $41.91 per adult equivalent per week.
This means that three out of ten Fijians were living in poverty in 2019-2020, with rural poverty still much higher than urban poverty.
According to the Bureau of Statistics, 160,450 people in rural areas are living in absolute poverty while 97,602 people in urban areas are living in absolute poverty.
The bureau says poverty was higher in rural areas standing at 41.5 percent than urban areas at 20.4 percent, with 62.2 percent of the poor living in rural areas.
Based on the bureau’s poverty estimates and distribution, 192,977 iTaukei, 58,933 Indo Fijians and 6,143 from the others population makeup are living in absolute poverty. This means the iTaukei made up 74.8 percent of those people living in absolute poverty, Indo Fijians made up 22.8 percent while other communities made up 2.4 percent. It has also been revealed that 134,060 males and 123,992 females were living in absolute poverty when the survey was conducted from February 2019 to February last year.
