Violence against women, drugs and school dropouts were some of the topics of concern discussed during the final day of the Great Council of Chiefs meeting.

GCC chair Ratu Viliame Seruvakula said the members called for these issues to be addressed as they affected the iTaukei community the most.

“There are other areas of concern with regards to violence against women,” Ratu Viliame said.

“There were a few speeches, very emotional speeches from members of the council, addressing each other for us to go back and really take it seriously, because Fiji now rates very highly in the world in terms of the wrong end of the scale in as far as domestic violence and violence against women is concerned.

“So, they’ve looked into that, and that’s where they have made their stand on how they want that to proceed in the future. Talking about the social issues that we have, drugs are a major concern, and the fact that it has crept into schools is really concerning.”

He said school dropouts was another issue discussed.

“When you look at the percentages of students graduating from medical school, for instance, there’s only 30 per cent of iTaukei and 60 per cent of other ethnic groups.”

He said the solution lay in communal upbringing and working together.

“Now, in my opinion, the challenge there for us, for the iTaukei, is we need to look after each other.

“We teach our children when they eat not to look down, to look up and look at other people because we are all together.

“And when you look at the kids, by the time they get to 15, 16, 17 years old, before we start to put this into secondary schools, we haven’t really given them the opportunity to be independent, to be able to work on their own, to stand up on their own two feet.”