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for the last five years the budget has been busted - and i don't think that there is denying that fact.

the blowout of 2007 was to be expected - the additional troop deployments generated those costs.

however the overspending over 2006 back to 2001 needs to be addressed.

overspending within the millitary over the last seven years is because of the inefficiecies inside the mechanical services section and the logistics acquisitions sections - especially the maintennance of millitary vehicles (which was contracted out over the last five years) and the purchases of uniforms - which contract had been awarded by the Public Tenders Board to an associate company of the SDL - to supply army boots and uniforms.

if you look at the breakdown - and if QEB does provide those breakdowns you will see that the SUBSTANTIAL portion of those funds were used in these two areas - repairing and maintaining equipment and in purchasing uniforms and boots.

obviously action needs to be taken on these issues.

and these actions have to be (a) the purchase of new equipment - if you keep old equipment which you continue to use well past its use by date, this is exactly what you will get - constant repairs and eventually very costly repairs - and then scams. the mechanical section of the RFMF utilised $600,000 in one year alone - back in 2004-2005 in maintaining a fleet of 60 vehicles at the Suva depot - which was the equivalent of about $10,000 maintenance costing per vehicle and this had been ongoing over the last seven years since 2001.

and then keeping that old equipment is another additional cost - their running costs get higher as the engines get old and as in the case of the patrol boats need huge amounts of fuel to keep an inefficient and old engine going - no longer at optimum high performance levels - and that also eats up a lot of money.

this is why you need to upgrade every seven to ten years. it ensures optimum efficiencies and lower running and maintenance costs

with respect to the purchases of new uniforms and boots - this is another big scam that has gone on within the millitary budget - the Public Tenders Board awarded that contract to an SDL affiliated company - who have supplied those uniforms over the last seven years at very exorbitant prices way way above the normal international supply prices.

the unforms and boots can be sourced internationally at a higher quality and far more competitive pricing then anything produced locally - but the irony is that successive governments had insisted on awarding tenders to the sole local supplier - until Commander Teleni decided to change it earlier this year with respect to combat fatigues and equipment and boots.

but these things are not sufficient explanations - the RFMF has to be transparent if it wants the rest of Fiji to be transparent - and transparency must start from Delainabua - and it must start with tight fiscal management and transparency. otherwise this is exactly what will happen - it will become an issue.

the proper thing to do will be (a) upgrade all existing equipment - new purchases (b) create a depreciations schedule over lifespan and dispose of equipment to the surplus market for book values on depreciation (c) move towards competitive sourcing of unfiforms and boots - even if it means international sourcing (d) get the spares and maintenance organised from source - this is one problem with the RFMf that needs addressing - they end up sourcing spares for their vehicles from local spare parts shops - who charge exorbitant prices - they should be getting those spares direct from the suppliers (e) get the engineers trained by the suppliers - and this is the new way forward - RFMf engineers will have to go offshore to the supply contractors factories and learn the engines and parts and repairs and handling of the equipment (f) they will have to take tighter fiscal control on logistics expenses

what Leweni has to do now is to tell the public what the RFMf intends to do about this situation - what steps will be taken to resolve these issues.

thats the way forward.

the State decides whether it needs an army or not.

we can have GUNS and BUTTER.

its not a question of removing the army - its a question of making the Army efficient.

at the moment we are not getting the full benefit of those Iraq contracts - becausethe Aussies are taking out 3/4 of the payout for the equipment. Fiji only gets 12 million a year from those deployments - the other 3/4 goes to Aussie - the correct figure we should be deriving from that deployment were it our own equipment would be closer to 50 million.

this is where we start talking about efficiencies.

what Narsey failed to point out in his article is the comparative figures for foreign income derived by the RFMF into the country over the last twenty years - and that figure is quite substantial. close to $600 million - and thats without the money from the equipment - had they had the equipment money coming in that figure would be a lot higher.

that is the crux of the issue - your issue is personal - you don't like the RFMF because its not supporting Qarase and George Speight.

its not about either Guns OR Butter for you - it never was.