MONITORING and enforcement of environment laws continues to be a work in progress for the Department of Environment, says Environment Ministry permanent secretary Joshua Wycliffe.
Responding to queries from participants at the 20th Attorney-General’s Conference in Sigatoka last Saturday, he said Government was looking to expand its efforts to ensure compliance from companies and developers.
“The Fijian Government is going through unprecedented changes to address the issue of monitoring and enforcement,” he said.
“We are looking at drone technology and another way is working cross-sectorially with other agencies in terms of training.
“We are training other community representatives from the iTaukei Affairs, Fisheries officers and other government agents to be able to ensure compliance so we are improving our agencies to include all of these other officials.
“We are also raising awareness for the public to report to us when they see a breach in our environment laws.”
The issues that legal practitioners face with the Department of Environment were raised by Fiji Environment Law Association co-ordinator Kiji Vukikomoala during a question and answer session on the second day of the conference.
She said it was a frustrating field to work in because of the number of challenges faced by practitioners.
“There is somewhat a lack of confidence in the ability of the Department of Environment to deliver or to effectively implement and enforce some of the environmental laws, and one of the things that we acknowledge is possibly the lack of personnel,” she said.
