Last Fiji peacekeepers leave Liberia

Transcript

The last of the Fiji police working in the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Liberia have been pulled out and are awaiting reassignment, possibly to Haiti.

Fiji's police commissioner Ben Groenewald says the withdrawal began earlier this year at the height of the Ebola epidemic but says all his officers who were in Liberia are now safely home awaiting redeployment.

Mr Groenewald is part of a ministerial delegation visiting Fiji defence force troops and police officers this week in various UN Peacekeeping missions around the world.

He told Koroi Hawkins so far he is satisfied with the conditions and support being provided to Fijian police officers overseas.

BEN GROENEWALD: We in fact we firstly visited the United Nations Peacekeeping head office in New York. We had discussion with the secretary, the deputy secretary general and people involved with the military and police deployments. And then we visited the deployment of the military people in Lebanon, south Lebanon deployment UNIFIL deployment. And presently we are in, at this stage I will not tell where we are at present but we will be visiting also deployments at other places including Sudan and most probably the people in Sinai.

KOROI HAWKINS: At the moment how many units or how many officers are out in the UN Peacekeeping mission from Fiji?

BG: Unfortunately I cannot speak on behalf of the military I do not have the numbers of military deployed. At this stage there are only police officers deployed in south Sudan. We previously had deployments in Liberia but due to the Ebola issue they were withdrawn our last people came back last month and we are also having deployments in Darfur. And we hope to be deployed to Haiti within the next few months.

KH: How important is it for the Fijian police force to have these international outings?  

BG: Well I think it is very important because our people are being appointed as, on different senior levels as well as operational levels and I think that they learn a lot because it is deployments from United Nations countries up to 100 I think 138 countries plus are involved in peacekeeping missions and I think it is a good learning curve for our officers to be deployed in peace keeping missions.

KH: Now you are saying the purpose of your trip is to visit these Peacekeeping missions. What is going to come out fo the trip? Are you presenting a report are your reviewing the process, further deployments?

BG: I think it  is, it is, it is normal practice that  the government or the department be involved in Peacekeeping operations to visit their people in deployments. So that gives it is a morale boost for these people and we ca see how their welfare are. And I am very much satisfied as indicated in our first visit the morale of the people and the support they are given to the environment where they are working in.