Justice

Public Goods Held Hostage

By Bishop Api / 7 August 2007

I speak here on behalf of the Anglican Church’s Episcopal Unit of Vanua Levu and Taveuni, regarding the strike actions brought on by the Fiji Nursing Association (FNA) and the unions affiliated to the Fiji Islands Council of Trade Unions (FICTU).

I would agree that nursing and teaching, among the civil service professions, should merit increases in their salaries. This is because of their direct service to human life; one deals with the health of our people and the other with the education of our children. These are fundamental to the kind of society that we wish to build and nurture; a compassionate, just and inclusive society. The nurses and the teachers may have genuine and legitimate concerns and, in this regard, I urge the interim government to listen carefully to the concerns of the nurses and teachers, and find a way to negotiate and mitigate them. Mediation is one that is not often tried. I urge the leaders in this dispute to go into mediation and negotiate their respective concerns and agree on what they can compromise upon, given our current situation.

However, because their professions deal directly with human life and the nurture of knowledge of our children, the strike actions by nurses and teachers are not justified. The greater claim on our moral responsibility lies with the preservation of human life, i.e., the care of the sick and the elderly, and the education of our children, and not with the demands of the interim government or the nurses or the teachers. Their concerns, whatever they are, must be dealt with through another formal mechanism and not through strike actions. In this regard, the strike actions by the nurses and the teachers cannot simply be morally justified.

Furthermore, health and education are not private goods where we can simply walk off our jobs without due consideration to the consequences of our actions to ourselves and to those whom we take an oath to serve, through thick and thin. These are first and foremost, public goods and as such, any action that will endanger the provision of these services cannot be justified action, even on ethical grounds. What seems to have been forgotten by the interim government, teachers and the nurses is the whole area of compassion and empathy to the very people they have pledged to serve. We must not forget that when we demand our rights, we must also hold out our responsibilities, in this case, to the sick, the elderly and the children.

Another reason why health and education are regarded as public goods is because of our society’s fundamental responsibility to the needy and the poor among us. We exercise this responsibility by making public health care and education affordable and accessible to them. Without this fundamental entitlement, the poor will have no recourse for their need for proper health care for themselves and education for their children. We should not ever subject our people to make a choice on whether they live or die, mainly because a few among us decided to hold what belongs to the public – health and education – ransom. We must also remember that many of our people are living below the poverty line and are worst off than most of us.

Where public goods such as health and education are put at risk, our first priority is to ensure that normal services in our hospitals, health centres and schools are not interrupted. This is because these are not only public goods to which all citizens are entitled to, but, as mentioned, they directly concern human life and our people’s right to life and our children’s right to education. These are basic values from a Christian point of view, and even from a humanistic one. Human life and the right to life are absolutes and must never be made relative.

We have all being called by God during this time of need to be servants to our “brothers and sisters”. In this regard, I wish to call upon all Anglican Church parishioners in the Episcopal Unit of Vanua Levu and Taveuni, especially those who have some medical knowledge, to help out, wherever you can and at a time that is most suitable to you and your families, in the hospitals in Labasa and Taveuni or in the other health centres around Vanua Levu. I would also like to request that we organise ourselves to visit the working nurses, doctors and the sick, and to volunteer our services in helping out in other areas of need in the hospitals and health centres around Vanua Levu.

In the Love and Peace of God
+ Bishop Apimeleki Qiliho

Bishop of the Episcopal Unit of the Anglican Church in Vanua Levu and Taveuni
2/8/2007
Contact Nos.: 9467048 (m) or 8811420 (ph)

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You might also be interested in his biblical reflection on forgiveness in a Fijian context.