Brain drain and loss of skilled labour remains a crucial issue for Fiji, says Minister for Employment, Productivity and Industrial Relations, Agni Deo Singh.
This was one of the main topics of discussion Mr Singh had during his meeting with the Fiji Commerce and Employers Federation last week.
“The loss of skilled labour, the loss of skilled manpower, and now we have to import labour from countries like Bangladesh, Philippines and the like,” he said.
“Why are our people going away is the multi-million dollar question.
“Is it only about money? Or is it more than money? Is it about the kind of environment we have for people here? Where they can still earn a decent wage, not necessarily Australia and New Zealand standard but enough to have a decent living and feel at home in their own country.
“I believe people are also very worried about other services that we have, for example, the health services.
“People want to go away because they know that if they become sick in this country they don’t have a good hospital to go to, State hospitals. Private hospitals are out of reach for them so all these factors multiply to complicate the situation for us.”
He emphasised that while labour mobility was an international issue which could not be solved overnight, they had to start thinking of other mechanisms to upskill those people who were still in the country. This included education and training.
“Look, labour mobility will always be there because people will always go to greener pastures, whatever you say. But skills training, skills building, technical vocational, competency efficiency, apprenticeship schemes, all these initiatives have to be put in place.”
He also questioned the setting up of technical colleges by the FijiFirst government, which were shut down after a few years of operation.
“What was the planning like? What was the feasibility like?
“Why did it fail? Did it really fail? Or is it that government stopped funding?
“My understanding is that they stopped funding it. We are seriously going to look at technical vocational education.
“Some of these technical colleges will have to be opened as early as possible in consultation with the employers and also with the Ministry of Education so we are looking at that very seriously,” Mr Singh said.
“And we must continue to develop skills as we used to do.”
