Government has allocated $5 million in the 2024-2025 Budget for Fijians earning less than $30,000 to visit private doctors with the State to foot the bill.

Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Professor Biman Prasad said this was on top of the $19m already paid so far.

He highlighted this while delivering the 2024-2025 Budget in Parliament last week.

The Deputy PM said to make things easier, those under social welfare schemes and other State- assistance programs will automatically qualify for the free treatment.

“We are continuing with our public private partnership with the general practitioners,” Prof Prasad said.

“But to reduce the abuse, in the last budget we had introduced an income threshold of $30,000 to access these free services.

“Those under the social welfare schemes, free medicine scheme and receiving kidney dialysis subsidy get an automatic access without any further assessment or income verification.

“They just need to present their welfare or free medicine card at the participating GPs.

“So far, we have paid $19 million to extend these services and in this budget we are estimating an additional cost of $5 million.”