Major changes are expected soon in relation to government funded scholarships as moves are now underway to move away from the current race based system.
For many years scholarships have been given out in two categories, one for only I-taukei and Rotuman applicants under the I-taukei affairs scholarships and the other only for Indians and the minority community under the Multi Ethnic Affairs Scholarships.
With moves already implemented to ensure that race based systems and policies are scrapped, Prime Minister Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama said the government is now looking at merging the scholarships.
Currently the two scholarships are categorised by race and given out along racial lines when new applications are called through the advertisements.
This has happened for years.
The criteria is also different.
For the Ministry of I-taukei affairs scholarships, there is no financial qualification or salary cut off for the students' parents, and anyone irrespective of how much the parents earn can apply as long as they are I-taukei or Rotuman.
However for the Multi Ethnic Affairs Scholarships, only the Indian students whose parents have a combined salary of $10,000 can apply while for the Minority students, they can only apply for a scholarship if their parents' combined salary is $15,000.
No reason has been given for the different criteria set but this seems to be the norm.
Commodore Bainimarama stressed that the new criteria will be merit and need based, not race based.
The People's Charter has a vision to have equal opportunities for all Fiji citizens irrespective of their race or religion.
It also states that there should be merit based equality when it comes to opportunities.
Story by: Vijay Narayan
Race based scholarships to go - PM
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