Gender Based Violence Meeting
Representatives from the Ministry of Women, Children and Poverty Alleviation, professional counselling groups and Non-government organisations met members of the Eastern Division Command Group in an effort to enhance working relations in handling matters pertaining to gender based violence.
The initiative follows a meeting held at Fiji Police Headquarters in May which brought together service providers in a bid to improve responses to cases of gender-based violence.
Since the first meeting in May, the Chief Operations Officer Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Abdul Khan has held similar meetings at the Divisional level where the representatives have so far met with the Divisional Police Commander South, Officer in Charge Totogo and their managers.
“The purpose of bringing us all together is so the representatives of the various agencies can meet officers at the Divisional level and establish communication lines”.
“Establishing these channels and exchanging contact details will enable us to improve our responses when addressing gender based violence”.
Some of the issues raised regarding Police services included the lack of urgency in issuing domestic violence restraining orders, professionalism when handling reports of gender based violence and the lack of urgency in attending to reports.
ACP Khan said the meeting gave members of the Eastern Division Command Group the opportunity to hear first-hand information on issues encountered by the representatives.
“We are here to serve the public and we need to work together because the survivors and victims of gender based violence will be at the receiving end of our services”.
“Rather than keeping things in the bag and waiting for a major meeting to address shortfalls in service delivery, we are streamlining processes by improving networking amongst all stakeholders so that issues can be addressed immediately”.
Discussions on having similar meetings in the Western and Northern Divisions are ongoing.
