Minister for Home Affairs and Defence Pio Tikoduadua has arrived safely in Israel as part of his six-week visit to the Middle East to meet Fijian peacekeepers, while Fiji Labour Party Leader Mahendra Chaudhry has criticised the trip as a waste of taxpayers’ funds.
Chaudhry says the six-week long Middle-East trip of Tikoduadua to visit our peacekeeping troops to 'hear their concerns directly', as he puts it, is unbelievably absurd.
He says six weeks is a long, long time for a highly paid Minister to be away from his duties at home.
The FLP leader says to make it worse, he adds that he is 'not going on a vacation but to stand shoulder to shoulder with our men and women in uniform'.
While directly addressing Tikoduadua, Chaudhry says it's going to cost the taxpayers thousands of dollars to send him on this junket as they see it.
He says the party thinks our men and women in uniform are quite capable of standing shoulder to shoulder on their own - they hardly need a Minister to inspire them.
The former Prime Minister also asks does the RFMF not have its own machinery to deal with such matters?
He says thousands of dollars will be wasted on this puerile trip while our hospitals and health centres remain deprived of money to provide medicine and other critical supplies to our sick.
Chaudhry says just how the Prime Minister allows such abuse of funds and irrational ministerial conduct, boggles the mind.
Meanwhile, Tikoduadua, in a facebook post, says he is not staying at a hotel in Israel, but at a wonderful homestay in the town of Buq’ata, close to the Israel-Syria Border.
He urges everyone not to ask him to respond to the statement made by this political party as he does not respond to parties led by convicted criminals.
The Minister had earlier said he is travelling alone and this is not a vacation.
