Head of the University of the South Pacific Professor Pal Ahluwalia, in Samoa.
By Staff Writer
The University of the South Pacific vice-Chancellor, Professor Pal Ahluwalia, is free to re-locate to Fiji from Samoa where he is currently based in exile.
Newly elected Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka made it clear to the Fiji media he is ready to accept back the head of the USP and Dr. Padma Lal.
“I am ready to meet Dr Lal and Professor Ahluwalia personally,” PM Rabuka told the Fiji Sun.
“I will apologise on behalf of the people of Fiji for the way they were treated.”
The Fiji Sun reported that Dr Lal – widow of the late leading Fiji academic Professor Brij Lal — was refused entry to Fiji with her husband’s ashes to be taken to his birthplace at Tabia, near Labasa.
PM Rabuka reportedly said prohibition orders against Professor Brij Lal and Dr Lal, as well as Professor Ahluwalia, were “unreasonable and inhumane” and should never have been made.
He had promised his government would bring to an end the injustices suffered by Professor Ahluwalia, and Professor Lal.
“I received a clarification today from the Department of Immigration that neither Dr Padma Lal nor Professor Ahluwalia were the subject of written prohibition orders,” he said.
Professor Ahluwalia was deported out of Fiji in 2021 and has been working from the Samoa Campus of the USP at Alafua.