The Fiji Times » Opinion

Editorial comment – Why we should listen to good advice

Permanent secretary for Health and Medical Services, Dr James Fong made an emotional plea yesterday, pointing to contact tracing. It’s not easy to do it the traditional way, he said. An app, careFiji, is supposed to enable that, and make contact tracing faster, and more accurate. The fact that we now have four new cases,...

Letters to the Editor – May 6, 2021

Hopes within our society Every now and then, The Fiji Times covers some very inspiring stories that touch the very depth of our hearts and give us hope that despite the fast degrading moral values in our society today, there are some people out there that prove that we humans are created in the image...

Letters to the Editor – Wednesday, May 5, 2021

Press freedom during COVID-19 WORLD Press Freedom Day was celebrated on May 3. This has come at a no better time when our journalists continue to face unprecedented challenges on reporting during the COVID-19 pandemic. They not only put their lives in danger but also their loved ones as they continue to move around our...

Editorial comment – Let’s do this Fiji

Permanent Secretary for the Ministry Health and Medical Services, Dr James Fong announced last night that there were no new cases of COVID- 19 to report. It would have inched out a sense of relief around the country. Let’s not forget though, the fight isn’t over. The virus isn’t to be taken lightly at all....

Skills sector reform – Institutional strengthening in Vanuatu

By ELLIS SILAS, JERROL ARNHAMBAT, FENDA SAM and ANTHONY BAILEY In recognition of the centrality of human resource development to economic growth outcomes, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT)-funded skills development programs around the Pacific region have been supporting skills sector reform and institutional strengthening since the late 1990s. The need to...

Editorial comment – Moving on

Yesterday was supposed to be a special day for journalists around the world. It was a day set aside to basically acknowledge the work of the media. This was proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in December 1993, following the recommendation of UNESCO’s General Conference. Since then, according to the UN website, May 3 is...

Letters to the Editor – May 4, 2021

Fiji Times addiction So, the Uluicicias (FT April 17) get their daily dose of news from The Fiji Times. Reading this newspaper has become their morning ritual daily. On this, I shall say you are best informed my respected seniors. This daily dose is in fact, a routine for many citizens in and outside Fiji....

Opting out of the SWP

So far in this series I’ve spoken mostly about working holiday makers or people with a right to stay in Australia. The status of my colleagues from Timor-Leste, though legal, was more complicated. In this article I discuss it. My Timorese friends were here as part of the Seasonal Worker Programme (SWP), which is to...

Letters to the Editor – Monday, May 3, 2021

World Press Freedom Day On May 3, 2021, the democratic world will celebrate World Press Freedom Day to commemorate 30 years of the signing of the Windhoek Declaration in 1991. This year’s conference is being held in Windhoek, Namibia, with the theme “Information as a public good”. We are living in an information explosion age....

For the public good

Today is supposed to be a special day for journalists. Today is World Press Freedom Day. For whatever it is worth, we hope today is an opportunity for people to understand the work of journalists, and that we will acknowledge people in the news and those who read, listen to, view, and surf the internet...

Editorial comment – For the public good

Today is supposed to be a special day for journalists. Today is World Press Freedom Day. For whatever it is worth, we hope today is an opportunity for people to understand the work of journalists, and that we will acknowledge people in the news and those who read, listen to, view, and surf the internet...

Dismal dogs and healthy walks

As if I haven’t had enough to put up with in dodging Covid-19, avoiding the uncomfortable consequences of a strange condition to do with giant cells attacking arteries and a fat head called ‘Moonface’ as a consequence of life-saving steroid treatment. Not to mention the unsightly bruising decorating my arms and legs because of the...

Editorial comment – We must break the chains

Permanent Secretary for Health and Medical Services Dr James Fong sounded a warning last night that we all must take note of. He confirmed two new cases of COVID-19 when he opened his daily briefing for the nation. They are the 5-year-old and the 15-year-old daughters of the mother from Cunningham in Suva. Both cases,...

Letters to the Editor – May 2, 2021

Saturday edition Thank you The Fiji Times for your Saturday editions, always the best read of the week. But yesterday I was almost becoming depressed as I ploughed through so much COVID news, information. comments, advice, and so on. Even Savenaca Narube was not so much economic-as COVID-related, followed by more articles that were on...

Coping with lockdowns

Greetings readers, it has indeed been a very difficult and trying time for all of us as we enter our second week of lockdown measures Fiji wide. It is a daily struggle for many families and loved ones as they have to spend long periods of time together in confined spaces, plus the added pressure...

‘Can the subaltern speak’ – Arrival of a ‘tsunami’ of cases

With the arrival of a “tsunami” of cases with variants amid trying vaccination drives, the COVID-19 pandemic has become a horror for the entire world. This virus has not spared anybody, where the elite may have the privilege of private care clinics, but the downtrodden or subalterns fail to make ends meet. Will ever the...

Vitamin D testing

Vitamin D is a fat-soluble steroid hormone precursor that is mainly produced in the skin by exposure to sunlight. Vitamin D is biologically inert and must undergo two successive hydroxylations in the liver and kidney to become the biologically active 1,25–dihydroxyvitamin D. The two most important forms of vitamin D are vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol) and...

International Worker’s Day – Sexual harassment

Historically today marks International Worker’s Day or Labor Day in some countries. It is a day to pay homage to the plight of workers all around the world, and give recognition to the various forms of discrimination and disparity in treatment of workers. With time there has been recognition of the need to protect the...

What’s wrong with being a renegade

THE only time my father slapped me was when I was five for being a smart-mouth. My friends and I were having dinner and I did not find the food particularly palatable. My father looked at the leftover food on my plate and asked, “do you know that millions of children go hungry in India...

COVID-19 second wave in Fiji – Lives and livelihood

COVID-19 virus has hit Fiji again through local transmission. The outbreak resulted from breaches in the border quarantine facility. Within seven days from identifying the first case, Fiji had a total of 24 locally transmitted cases. The second wave appears to be more aggressive with cases spreading in new and densely populated areas on Viti...

Gaming the system – Artificial Intelligence (AI) Hackers

THE formal definition of a hack is something that a system allows, but that is unintended and unanticipated by the systems designers. Note the details – hacking is not cheating per se. It’s following the rules, but subverting their intent. It’s seeking an unintended result, an exploitation – basically it’s “gaming the system”. Hacks are...

T-cells response – Genetics can influence how our immune system responds to SARS-CoV-2

Right now, white blood cells known as T-cells are cruising through your body looking for any signs of an infection. New research has shown your genetics influence how well these immune system cells respond to SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19). But can your genetic make-up also influence how your T-cells react to the COVID-19...

COVID-19 under siege – On the brink of economic disaster

The country is under siege. Fiji is on the brink of a disaster that may devastate the entire country. This wave of the virus is much more dangerous than the first one. The solution is not in the hands of anyone else but our own. If there was ever a time that we should rise...

Letters to the Editor – May 1, 2021

Man of the moment Every evening I stay glued to my TV screen to listen to Dr James Fong, the man of the moment. He brings hope and cheer on our faces. His dissemination of the latest information on the killer COVID-19 virus is chilling indeed. It is frightening that the matter can get out...

Editorial comment – At war with COVID-19

Permanent Secretary for Health and Medical Services Dr James Fong last night reinforced the need for residents of Suva and Nausori to go into battle mode against COVID-19. Starting at 8 o’clock last night, he said the Capital City and Nausori corridor would be on “war footing”. We have 56 hours, he said, to break...

Mauritius a high-income country – Fiji is less than halfway there

By STEPHEN HOWES, SHERMAN SURANDIRAN Both Mauritius and Fiji are remotely located islands situated far from global business centres, both developed as sugar plantation economies, but their economies have taken drastically different paths over the past half a century. Last year the World Bank reclassified Mauritius as a high-income country. Its 2019 income (GNI per...

Letters to the Editor – April 30, 2021

Hard work pays off When Fred Wesley uploaded a preview of the following day’s The Fiji Times on his Facebook page, I couldn’t wait to read the story of Paula Balekana who signed a contract with the Houston SaberCats for the 2021 Major League Rugby season. His message to the kids was touching: “To achieve...

Editorial comment – Watching out for each other

One message continues to come out daily during the briefing by the Health Ministry permanent secretary Dr James Fong. It’s for us to stay home. Containment protocols can be demanding, he acknowledged. However, he said the restrictions “are very nearly measures of last resort. They are in effect because lives depend on their being enforced”....

Opinion

Preventing drowning – Accounting for a greater loss of life annually