ACTING Fiji Corrections Service commissioner Sevuloni Naucukidi says he faced significant resistance when he began efforts to realign the organisation back to the required standards upon taking up his role.
In an exclusive interview with The Fiji Times, he rejected claims of unethical practices, and that all operations were conducted according to the required procedures of the service.
“It was hard because there was a lot of resistance, mostly externally from public pressure due to a lot of misinformation,” Mr Naucukidi said.
“But I can assure you that there are no corrupt practices as they’ve all been eliminated.
“We have been aligning to all the regulations, all the laws, all the policies, required of us. We’ve been doing it right.”
He said this was the reason why so much has been achieved in the past three months alone.
“We managed to push out two annual reports that were pending from 2020-2021 and 2021-2022.
“I shifted the staff a bit and created the planning and development unit while also uplifting the audit and compliance unit.
“We developed the strategic plan and annual corporate plan inculcating forward-looking values to drive FCS.”
Mr Naucukidi said one of his main achievements had been the 2025-2026 budgetary allocation for FCS, which increased by $4.7million from last year’s $57.8m.
“We did a lot of work with our budget preparation.
“Before, they were just working with the increase in the prison population but this year, I went down to make sure we not only work with numbers but also the needs on the ground, the policies and the laws.”
