Shonal Chand, 16, has ditched school to work full time to assist his financially struggling family. He sells pineapples, watermelons and other local seasonal fruits by the roadside six days a week.

Today he runs a stall at Laucala Beach Estate, a busy hub about 12 kilometres from this capital city. Chatting away while expertly skinning and slicing succulent pineapples with a dangerously sharp-looking knife, Chand said he has been doing this work since he was 14.

Before he quit school, he was working only on weekends. Last year his parents gave him permission to start working full-time. “I did not like school and I wanted to make money to help my family,” he said, smiling.

Chand’s father, who is a taxi driver, and his mother, a packer at a food-processing factory, did not protest too hard when their son said he wanted to leave school and work. The family was struggling to make ends meet, and the extra income was much needed.

According to Fiji’s 2002/2003 Household Income and Expenditure Survey, an estimated 43 percent of the total population of 850,000 lives in poverty of varying degrees.

Observers believe that the situation of tens of thousands of poor families like Chand’s has become even more desperate since the global economic crisis struck in 2007. Such families are now forced to prematurely pull their children out of school and send them to work.

Fiji’s compulsory education age is 15, which is also the minimum legal age for work. The law also prohibits Fiji children below 18 from working during school hours. But just as in many developing countries with high levels of poverty and low levels of social welfare, child labour laws are either poorly enforced or ignored as strict implementation could lead to the affected family going without food.

Biman Prasad, an economics professor at the University of the South Pacific, said that despite having more than 95 percent of children in school, there are more children living in poverty and more of them engaged in child labour than before.

“The main reason why we see more students not being able to complete primary education is financial difficulties,” said Prasad. “While we have made some economic progress, we are still far from achieving levels of economic growth that can effectively lead to the reduction in poverty.”

More ominous for Fiji is the finding by a non-government organisation, Save the Children Fiji, of increased child prostitution. A 2009 survey of 87 adults and 104 children below the age of 18 in seven sites around Fiji uncovered evidence of more young people engaging in prostitution as a result of the economic hardships brought on by the crisis.

The results of the survey of sex workers commissioned by the International Labour Organisation have yet to be released , but a spokesperson for the international children’s charity said that many of the children interviewed had fallen into prostitution in the last two years as a result of economic hardships.

Statistics on the scale of child labour in Fiji are unavailable, but several recent reports attest to the problem.

The ‘2008 Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor – Fiji’ published by the United States Department of Labor stated that children work in agriculture, including tobacco and sugar farms, the informal sector, in family businesses, and on the streets, selling snacks, shining shoes and delivering goods.

Children are exploited through prostitution, pornography and sex tourism, and they are trafficked within Fiji for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation by Fiji citizens, added the report.

The U.S. State Department’s ‘2008 Fiji Country Report on Human Rights’ said increasing urbanisation has led to more children working as casual labourers, often with no safeguards against abuse or injury.

Economically, Fiji was already on its knees when the financial crisis hit, with the country experiencing its fourth military coup barely a year earlier on December 2006.

The global increase in fuel and food prices that followed only worsened the country’s predicament. As a bulk importer of food and fuel, Fiji is especially vulnerable to the price increases. In 2009, Fiji imported 520 million Fiji dollars (271.70 million U.S. dollars) worth of food. Its fuel bill in the same year came to 757.2 million Fiji dollars (395.64 U.S. dollars).

The country experienced a 6.6 percent decline in growth in 2007 and zero percent growth in 2008. Its economy was forecast to grow by 2.5 percent in 2009.

On Apr. 15 last year, Fiji’s Reserve Bank, in an effort to mitigate the effects of the financial meltdown, devalued the currency by 20 percent. This effort to bolster the vital tourism industry, attract investors and protect foreign reserves led to a further increase in the cost of living.

Again, it was the poor that bore the brunt of the devaluation. Earnings either declined or remained static while the prices of basic food items and the cost of transport shot up.

Under the prevailing economic conditions, Chand’s family is only too happy he is able to bring home as much as 150 Fiji dollars (78.37 U.S. dollars) a week as a full-time fruit vendor.

Several other boys with similar stories to Chand are employed by the latter’s boss. Some, like 16-year-old Kunal Prasad, along with his younger brother and sister, are still in school. But further hardships could force him and his siblings to follow in Chand’s footsteps.

According to the Fiji Wages Council chairman Kevin Barr, the dropout rate from Fiji schools before the onset of the global financial crisis was as high as 66 percent, mainly because of poverty.

Speaking at a regional symposium on “Population and Development in the Pacific Islands” at the University of the South Pacific in Suva in November 2009, Barr said that Fiji’s high literacy rates notwithstanding, only about 49 percent of students who enter primary school made it to secondary schools.

There are concerns that the dropout rate may have worsened since the financial crisis struck. In April last year, Fiji’s education minister Filipe Bole said about 15 percent of children did not survive the full eight years of their primary education, while about 74.9 percent did not complete secondary education. School dropouts often end up in the labour force.

The Foundation of the Education of Needy Children, The Rescue Mission Community Association and the Nourish Fiji Children Project are carrying out separate research on the impact of the global crisis on children and youths while raising funds to support the education of poor children.

Government is also taking measures to tackle what it sees as a looming problem. In addition to providing tuition-free education, it has set aside 10 million Fiji dollars (5.2 million U.S. dollars) in the 2010 national budget for free school bus fares. Also, the education ministry has pledged to provide free textbooks to all students beginning this year, starting with primary schools.

This year about 7.4 million Fiji dollars (3.85 million U.S. dollars) have been allocated for the Family Assistance allowance along with a monthly 30 Fiji dollar (15.60 U.S. dollars)-food voucher programme for poor families. Such assistance is expected to benefit around 20,000 people.

“Those on family assistance (about 21,000 people) are only the tip of the iceberg of poverty,” Barr was quoted as having told the ‘Fiji Times’, He added that 60 percent of the people in full-time employment – numbering around 210,000 – earn wages that put them below the poverty line, and over 40 percent of children in Fiji are malnourished. Furthermore, an estimated 104,000 people in Fiji currently reside in depressed sites.

Even before the global financial meltdown, the country was already struggling with some basic indicators relating to child health and nutrition.

At the regional symposium on population and development, Dr Jimaima Schultz, the manager of Fiji’s National Food and Nutrition Centre, tabled research that showed 40 percent of children between the ages of six months and five years were deficient in iron, vitamin A and zinc.

Dr Schultz said their research revealed that one in every three Fijian child surveyed was anemic. So were three out of every five children under two years of age. Additionally, for every 10 children surveyed, at least three were at risk of vitamin A deficiency. She added that food prices were, in the vast majority of cases, strong determinants of a family’s diet.

Notwithstanding the children’s nutritional needs, Prasad, the economics professor, said Fiji’s future rests on how best the country can meet the educational needs of its children in primary schools.

“The best way to break the vicious cycle of poverty in households is to ensure that children from these households receive at least a complete primary education. The government must ensure that it provides funds for all primary schools in the country so that basic minimum standards with respect to facilities are provided,” he said.

“It is an investment in the country’s future.”

(*This feature was produced by IPS Asia-Pacific under a series on the impact of the global economic crisis on children and young people, in partnership with UNICEF East Asia and the Pacific.)

The December 2006 coup, Fiji’s fourth in less than 20 years, was dubbed a “cleanup campaign” by military commander Frank Bainimarama, now Fiji’s interim prime minister.

Bainimarama said his crusade was against a racist, corrupt and wasteful administration. But, for a people tired of years of gross misrule, disillusionment soon set in.

There soon began allegations of non-accountability, abuse of office, nepotism, misuse of public property and financial mismanagement.

Now Bainimarama and his former interim finance minister Mahendra Chaudhry – two vociferous critics of the former government’s abuse of powers – have become enmeshed in allegations of financial impropriety.

Recent reports allege that Bainimarama took FJD 180,000 (97,071 US dollars) in leave pay dating back 20 years. And then Chaudhry confirmed that he had an Australian bank account holding more than FJD one million (539,287 dollars) that had been collected from Chaudhry’s supporters in India, following his ousting as prime minister in the 2000 coup.

Chaudhry’s claim that Bainimarama was owed back pay, and that as interim finance minister he did the correct thing to approve the payment, was hardly convincing.

Akuila Yabakai, chairman of the Citizen’s Constitutional Forum, a nongovernmental organisation, said, “For Mr. Chaudhry to say that he was not aware of any irregularities regarding the payout shows a very poor understanding of the accountability mechanisms of public finance.

Fiji’s military has been justifying the 2006 coup on the basis that a cleanup of the civil service and its procedures was necessary to end corruption. However, the payout to Bainimarama casts doubt on this objective.”

Chaudhry denied that the money collected in India was for victims of the 2000 coup. Chaudhry has said little more about it. But a government spokesman’s assertion that the money was for his and his family’s resettlement in Australia, needed because of the danger they faced in 2000, dismayed supporters like taxi driver Anand Chand.

Chaudhry, former prime minister of Fiji and leader of the Fiji Labor Party, is the country’s most popular and powerful ethnic Indian leader. He built his trade union and political career as a crusader against corruption, champion of the poor and a campaigner of the rights of the country’s sugar cane farmers and working class people.

Chand is 50, works 12 hours a day and takes home FJD100 (53 dollars) a week. He said he once regarded Chaudhry as a god, because Chaudhry fought for poor people like him. He appeared baffled by Chaudhry’s claim that the money was for his family.

“Chaudhry is a wealthy man. All his children were educated overseas and have good jobs. Why does he need the money?” Chand asked.

Some callers to a talk radio show were equally dismayed and clearly felt betrayed. They were also angered when Chaudhry gave a gift of FJD70,000 (37,750 dollars) to his daughter.

As Fiji Islanders were was coming to terms with all this, the first accounts of the auditor general’s 2007 report started to emerge. The early prognosis was, predictably, ominous. The admonishments of the Public Accounts Committee, which reviewed the reports and submitted them to the interim cabinet during July and August, started to repeat like a tape loop.

Since the 1990s, the auditor general has exposed Fiji’s inept and awkward civil service as a hotbed of corruption, with blatant, systematic and consistent abuse of millions of dollars in public funds and aid money at the highest levels.

A previous auditor general report described government agencies as “fraught with widespread abuse and ineptitude. It added, “Corruption was a cancer that had spread from the prime minister’s office throughout the rest of government.”

For a civilian population of less than 900,000, a civil service that numbers 35,000 is considered large. Explaining the need for reforms, senior civil servant Pramesh Chand said that up to 82 percent of the government’s resources were used up by the civil service.

The latest report, an audit from 2005 to 2006 of 13 ministries and departments, uncovered irregularities in various ministries, including delays in reconciling ledgers, as well as huge time-off liabilities.

“Grave” concerns were raised over the Qarase government’s continued reliance on loans to meet day-to-day operations and the funding of debts through treasury bills during the 2005 to 2006 period.

Critics pointed out that public debt doubled during Qarase’s six-year rule to 52 percent of the GDP. Debt levels of 40 percent of GDP are considered unsustainable by international standards, particularly for small, vulnerable economies.

But this did not deter the Qarase administration from taking domestic and overseas loans of close to 64 million dollars to finance a gross budget deficit of FJD265 million (142 million dollars).

Biman Prasad, a professor in development economics at the University of the South Pacific, says Fiji’s high debt levels are linked to the consistent mismanagement of state resources by successive governments.

“Resources allocated year-in and year-out are wasted so projects and infrastructure development do not get completed within the allocated amount. Government has to allocate more for the same project in subsequent years, and to do that it has to borrow,” Prasad said.

In Fiji, around 30 percent of the estimated 900,000 people do not earn incomes adequate for basic needs. Poverty and hardship are serious issues compounded by government waste, corruption and mismanagement.

To make up for state revenues that are squandered on an annual basis, governments often resort to increasing the tax burden. The Qarase government was on the verge of increasing a direct consumer tax from 12.5 percent to 15 percent before it was ousted.

Commentators said the move would have exacerbated the vicious poverty cycle that is a reality for many people in the country.

Prasad has co-authored a recently published research paper showing that Fiji accumulated an infrastructure deficit of FJD 3.4 billion Fiji dollars (1.8 billion dollars) in the last 20 years.

According to the paper corruption and waste were partly responsible for the situation. According to the interim government, almost 50 percent of allocated funding was lost to corruption in the six years of Qarase rule.

Such hideous levels of abuse would be intolerable in most countries. In Fiji, successive governments – often because of their complicity – or for political reasons, turned a blind eye to the problem.

Tender processes are circumvented with impunity, with documents amended to suit particular companies. Contracts worth millions are awarded under dubious circumstances.

The Water and Sewage Department of the Ministry of Works stands out as a shameful example of Fiji’s corruption problems. It has been cited in several auditor general’s reports.

But this is hardly a deterrent as little follow-up action is taken. Recently, Paul Wilisoni, the director of water and sewage, was suspended on half-pay during investigations by an anti-corruption unit.

In 2003, money paid to contractors for carrying water to consumers, because of infrastructure breakdown, resulted in losses of up to FJD 9 million (4.6 million dollars).

With tens of thousands of families facing water supply problems, there have been recent reports of people stealing water from the tanks of a large school just outside Suva, preventing the school from opening for the new term.

While some have exploited the corrupt system and made their fortunes, Fiji’s residents suffer the consequences on a daily basis.

Doctor and nurse shortages, the lack of basic medicine at state-run hospitals, long waiting periods at all hospitals, dilapidated schools in rural areas, roads in constant disrepair and a collapsing water supply system are some of the everyday problems encountered by Fiji Islanders.

For the approximately 12.5 percent of Fiji’s population who now live as squatters, government allocations for resettlement have been woefully inadequate. Police investigations are no match for the scale of abuse.

Cases that make it to court experience lengthy delays in a clogged system. For example, it took eight years before former company director Pita Alifereti was convicted in the “Agriculture Scam” on Sep. 15, 2008.

While a leaner, better-paid civil service would perform better and be less susceptible to corruption, a powerful pubic sector union and reluctance on the part of successive governments to make tough political decisions has delayed and hampered reforms.

Far from downsizing the civil service, the Qarase government promised FJD 85 million (46 million dollars) in salary increases just prior to the 2006 elections in what was widely seen as a vote-buying move. This was halted by the interim government.

But even the interim government has balked at implementing some reforms. Recently Bainimarama assured people there would be no job losses in plans to reform the public sector.

According to Prasad, urgent action is needed. Corruption and public sector inefficiency, he says, is partly responsible for the paltry average economic growth rate of 1.73 percent from 2000 to 2006.