Fiji's government has extended the closure of schools in the country to 30 June - more than two weeks after they were scheduled to reopen.
The Ministry of Education said with no active Covid-19 cases, the extension period would be used to re-evaluate how to reopen the schools in a 'post-pandemic society'.
Schoolchildren in Fiji Photo: Fiji Government
Education Minister Rosy Akbar said the extension would also allow the government to look into schools that required rehabilitation work due to damage caused by Cyclone Harold in April.
"Heads of schools will facilitate the arrangement for their students' resource materials to be picked up by the parents.
"We do not expect any student to go to the schools to receive their resources and packages from the teachers."
Ms Akbar said teachers had been going into schools since 20 April to prepare resources for the parents.
The minister said parents could access supplementary resources available on the ministry's website, Google shared drive, Facebook and radio programmes.
Ms Akbar also said students were able to access the government-operated Walesi educational television channel from 27 April.
The Fiji Minister for Women, Children and Poverty Alleviation, Rosy Akbar Photo: SUPPLIED
But Opposition parliamentarian Lenora Qereqeretabua said plans to hold classes over the Walesi platform would come at a cost to parents.
The National Federation Party MP said struggling parents would need to fork out $US68 to purchase a Walesi set top box so it would bot be accessible to all students.
However Ms Akbar and Walesi refuted Ms Qereqeretabua's claims saying her statement "lacked proper research".
According to Walesi, the set top box costs $US46, not $US68 as claimed.
In a statement, the company also said a programme launched in 2016 subsidised free Walesi boxes to households which had a joint income of less than $US14,000.
Walesi said the subsidy scheme had benefitted over 109,000 Fijians with 134,797 boxes issued across the country.
It said there had been over 400,000 downloads of its app and this allowed users to access all Walesi channels, including the education channel.
Lenora Salusalu Qereqeretabua (born March 1968) is a broadcaster and member of the Parliament of Fiji. She is a member of the National Federation Party (NFP). Photo: NFP Facebook Page
Earlier, the Education Minister labelled Ms Qereqeretabua's comments as "fake news".
Rosy Akbar said 93 percent of the population was online which meant that a "large number of students should have access to our content".
She said should a student not have access to Walesi, they should have access to the same materials available at their schools.
Meanwhile, the Fiji Times newspaper last week conducted what it called random surveys among people in the community.
The surveys found that many people had a free Walesi box but it was not used because the reception was either poor and they did not know how to get it connected.
Some stated they did not have access to Walesi and there were others who said they did not own a TV or a smartphone to download the Walesi app.
