THE HONOURABLE MINISTER FOR YOUTH AND SPORTS
MR LAISENIA TUITUBOU

Address at Closing of Ministry of Youth and Sports Mid-Term Review and Annual Corporate Plan Start Up Workshop at FNU Nasese Campus, on Wednesday 15th February

•  The Assistant Minister of Youth and Sports;
•  Permanent Secretary for Youth and Sports;
•  Director for Youth and Sports;
• Heads of Departments;
•  Staff, colleagues and friends

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Ni sa bula vinaka.

I want to first of all thank all of you for putting your thoughts together and for availing yourselves in discussing our progress as a Ministry during this fiscal year as well as for getting the ball rolling on our Annual Corporate Plan for the next year, the document with which we will benchmark ourselves from for the coming financial year.

I am especially happy to be here this afternoon to close this planning workshop because I also wish to pose a few questions to senior staff and all who are present here.

With discussions during our workshop centred on how the Ministry plans to adapt and become more outcome based with our programmes intended to impact our youths and target audiences more, I ask this of you; How can you, as staff of the Ministry work to make our young leaders more independent and confident.  

I want to especially base my address this afternoon from this very same theme. As civil servants you are all required to continuously shift and adopt yourselves to be in line with what your leaders envision for the ministry for the overall development of our targeted audience. You must constantly rise up to meet that challenge, the challenge to improve yourselves on a daily basis, to elevate your standard of work to one that is suitable in realising your units purpose and you must also put aside petty squabbles and work together as a unit for the betterment of one and all. You must challenge yourself, every day as you wake up to ensure this is realized.

So as you ponder on this, also remember the Ministry’s Vision and Mission which is Dynamic Youth, Live Better through Sports and Empowering Youth and Fostering a Culture of Sporting Excellence for All respectively. Are we doing enough to achieve our mission? If not, what are we lacking on? We must identify these gaps and rectify them. We must realign ourselves in order to truly carry out our roles and responsibilities as a ministry. I want to urge all of you to bear all this in mind as we journey together.

How effective are the assessments that are being done on a quarterly basis, how are we monitoring our recipients and what are we doing to further strengthen their efforts in becoming fully sustaining. All these and more is required if we are to truly realise a dynamic youth population as is so adamantly mentioned in our Ministry’s Vision statement.

I also want to remind you that this Government is now more than ever reaching out to all Fijians regardless of ethnicity, creed, religion or culture and this must be reflected in how we as a ministry deliver our services. We must continuously reach out to the disadvantaged in our society and also keep in mind that the demographics surrounding one youth club is vastly contrasting for another. We must embrace this inclusive stance taken by Government and administer our services accordingly.

Before I conclude, I want to reiterate the sentiments echoed during the opening of this workshop reason being as we plan, it will identify ways to improve the ministry’s performance and also contribute to how we effectively contribute towards meeting our objectives for empowering young Fijians.

This workshop is geared towards our collective outputs come the next fiscal year and a proper planning process will indeed provide an efficient guide for staff of the ministry to meet organizational goals to specific objectives and actions for every unit, division, training centre and staff; and will lead to better performances in all areas and also foster a stronger team culture.

So today as we close this planning workshop, please bear in mind all the objective set out in this workshop, remember that monitoring and evaluation is an imperative aspect of our service as we seek to empower our young people and at the same time foster a sporting culture that will undoubtedly boost our future generation towards a bright future. Also be mindful of our timelines which are clearly set out in our planning document as we strive towards steering our future leaders.

I once again wish to thank all who have contributed to the success of the workshop and I look forward to a bigger and brighter year to come.

I ask that you continue to show your support to me and senior management as we head towards what I can say will indeed be another great year for the Ministry.

Vinaka vakalevu.