THE Fiji Labour Party has opened an office in Lautoka in a bid to better understand people’s needs.

The office will be manned by the party’s assistant general secretary Aman Singh and will cater for the Lautoka and Vuda districts.

The move is also an initiative by the party to help ordinary people liaise better with party representatives and those who will likely be candidates in this year’s elections. Labour leader and former prime minister Mahendra Chaudhry said the districts would be divided into six zones.

“We hope to build a good team and the intention is to provide service to people in need,” he said.

“We have noticed that we no longer have a single member constituency and this hasn’t served our people well.”

Mr Chaudhry said in the national constituency, people were unable to relate to members of Parliament or vice-versa.

“People aren’t able to identify a particular candidate as their MPs. Likewise, the MPs are also unable to relate to the people in a particular constituency.”

He said localising their approach would help people better relate to them and their efforts.

“We will be exclusively campaigning those areas and if elected to parliament, we will be serving people in those particular areas.

“That way we can bring MPs closer to the people and the people closer to the MPS.”