Education Minister Premila Kumar has labelled National Federation Party leader Professor Biman Prasad as “impolite, abusive and disrespectful”.
This comes after Prof Prasad released a statement on Wednesday, titled “NFP describes the recent flurry of ministerial activity on the ground as a conga line of ministers abusing taxpayers’ funds”.
She said Prof Prasad was obsessed with the coming election and forgot there was a Government in place which had to carry out its responsibilities until before the next election as the law permitted.
“The words that he regularly utters are unbecoming of a man who carries the title of a professor,” she said. “As a professor, he should show some humility and respect.
“If you have issues with the Government, you should deal with these professionally.
She said using words such as “the ministers have suddenly found time, energy and resources to scurry all over the country like squeaking, hissing and chattering rats” made it sound like the professor had lost his sanity and lacked intelligence.
“There are better ways of being critical and making your point on the basis of facts than by shouting and being abusive.
“But this man has always been derogatory and lacks professional respect for others.
He expresses his opinions loudly, thinking that the louder he is, the more he will be able to push his lies and influence people.
“He has simply exhausted all the ammunition in his armoury to pointlessly attack the Fijian Government is doing for its people during the most difficult time.”
She said Prof Prasad’s words were hollow with no substance.
“And he fails to come up with viable alternatives.”
She said it was very dishonest of him to say that teachers were taken away to attend a teachers’ forums in Suva, Labasa, and Lautoka because “the Education Minister was more important than students”.
“The forum was organised to encourage and empower women teachers towards leadership roles to remove bias and inequality. Why does he have an issue with that? For such a noble cause, the leader of NFP has done his usual political grandstanding, and in fact, has shown disrespect to the female teachers who attended the teachers’ forum in Lautoka.
“He is playing politics by implying that because teachers attended the forum, they left the students unattended.
“A few hours of absence from school has not affected the learning and revision for our students, classes and supervision were organised by our women teachers.
“This is the same story with NFP and the unions, who were not in favour of reopening of schools. Where was the loss of face-to-face learning then?”
