The Fijian Elections Office [‘FEO’] has today disbursed $7,150 to 21 communities in Fiji as part of the Community Engagement Project in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme. In addition, 21 Community Election Advocates [‘CEA’] have collectively received their allowances for conducting election awareness sessions in their respective groups.

In announcing the second round of disbursements, Supervisor of Elections, Mr Mohammed Saneem said the programme is progressing well and the CEAs have done well in conducting voting related talanoa within their communities and the payment is for the communities to use for their projects.

The CEAs are required to conduct a 15-minute awareness session on elections with their community members and depending on the number of participants who attend the session, the community receives a grant which will go towards any development activity that benefits their community.

So far, the FEO has disbursed $14,500 to 44 communities as part of this project.