The total board directors’ fees of the Fiji National Provident Fund have significantly reduced from $90,000 in the year 2007 to $27, 000 last year.
Based on the FNPF Annual Reports in 2007 to 2010, there is also a major reduction in the consolidated board directors fees.
In 2007, the total consolidated directors fees was 514 thousand dollars, in 2008 it was 506 thousand dollars, in the year 2009 it was $585,000 while the total directors fees was $372,000 last year.
The practice from 2007 to 2009 was that the FNPF board members would get paid fees for sitting on the FNPF board, its subsidiary boards, and even for sitting on various committees such as the human resource committee of the same company.
The FNPF board consists of five people.
In a statement, Prime Minister and Finance Minister, Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama had highlighted at least two board members total directors fees.
He said employee representatives, Felix Anthony and Daniel Urai were paid $185, 934 and $156, 287 respectively over a period of three years.
Majority of the board members were removed in 2009.
He said the practice of being paid for sitting on individual committees and boards of subsidiary or related companies has been stopped.
We contacted Daniel Urai who was a board member of FNPF from December 2006 to June 2009.
We asked him how much he got as a board member.
However Urai said he cannot recall how much he received in total including the fees for FNPF's subsidiary companies.
We then quoted the total board directors fees for FNPF and its subsidiaries from the Annual Reports of FNPF prepared by KPMG for 2007 to 2009. We quoted to him that each year from 2007 to 2009, the total directors fees was in excess of half a million dollars.
Urai then said that the reports are misleading.
Felix Anthony said the directors fees payments were made in accordance with the rules and longstanding government policy.
Although Anthony does not reveal how much he got as a director, he said the payments were not approved by them and was handled by the management.
Story by: Vijay Narayan and Praneeta Deo
2006-2009 FNPF directors fees in the spot light again
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