MINISTER FOR YOUTH AND SPORTS
HON.PARVEEN KUMAR BALA

Thursday 28th January, 2021, 2:30 PM

• Master of Ceremonies
• Trainers
• My Ministry Staff
• Youth Participants
• Members of the Media
• Ladies and Gentlemen

Bula Vinaka and a very good afternoon to you all!
It’s always a pleasure for me as the Minister for Youth and Sports to witness the achievement of our youths. And today I am happy to be here to close your Empowerment training on Health and Wellbeing.

At the outset, I must thank the trainers for this programme and likewise our participants. My Ministry is grateful to you all.

To support the on-going development of young people, this empowerment training focused on empowering the youth participants with information to help them make healthy lifestyle choices and skills to be able to actively contribute to their communities and society. I am told that 50 youths took advantage of this training.

So far we have conducted a total of five trainings on Health and Wellbeing for this financial year. From these five trainings, a total of 220 youths have benefitted and have been empowered as a result.

Dear Youths, our vision is to build healthy and socially engaged youths. While the Government continues to invest in improving the quality and access to healthcare, it is also doing what it can to increase food security.

Government wants all Fijians to benefit from growing more food locally since Fiji is blessed with so much fertile land. It has already put in place a number of innovative initiatives and projects that are making considerable progress for youths in Agriculture. An example is my Ministry’s Youth Farm Initiative Programme. Government provides grants and assistance to those youths engaged in farming while landowners provide consent for these youths to utilize the vacant land. It is a partnership between Landowners, Youth Clubs and the Ministry of Youth.

Ladies, Gentlemen and Youths, I hope that you all had an open mind to think beyond what is in front of us. In fact, we need to work together with likeminded colleagues to achieve goals. At a very basic level, this workshop is about doing what is right for our youths, right now we are faced with COVID-19 Pandemic, the impact of Cyclone Yasa and more warnings on strong winds, more rain and flash floods.

I encourage you all to remain focused and be ready to face challenges. As you all are aware that COVID-19 Pandemic is a fight that no one is winning, for your information our Honourable Prime Minister has said that the Fijian Governments priority is to secure effective COVID-19 Vaccines as soon as possible.

Dear Youths, another issue that I wish to speak on is DRUGS! For too long, we believe the drug problem is in remote or in maritime areas, but the reality is that this problem affects most of our communities in particular our Youths. And since we all are concerned about that, we all have to stand together and face the problem head on! It is a serious threat to the health and wellbeing of our people. All those who are involved in this trade have little respect for the lives of our people, so please say NO to DRUGS!

With those few words, I congratulate you all and hope that the skills learnt during the training will assist you in your future endeavours.

Wish you all the best. Vinaka