Fijian Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama says after another worse-than-anticipated quarter for the world economy, COVID-19 is clearly the job killer of the century.
Delivering his remarks at the International Labour Organisation’s Global Virtual Summit on COVID-19 and the World of Work yesterday, Mr Bainimarama highlighted the unique challenges presently faced by the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) during this COVID-19 crisis, which had severely affected important sectors of the economy particularly, tourism, trade and disruption in supply chains.
“SIDS are shouldering this pandemic’s most severe economic fallout. The scale of our labour markets means global shocks hold far more destructive impact, and we don’t have the deep pockets of wealthier nations to bail out whole industries or pump stimulus levels of liquidity into our markets,” he said.
“COVID-19 is deepening the very same inequalities exposed by climate change, a painful parallel that is accelerating catastrophe across SIDS economies.
“While Fiji is a COVID-contained country with no cases outside of our quarantine facilities in over 80 days, the burden that Fijian people carry on their backs has not shifted an inch. The floors of many factories are still quiet and with borders shut around the world, Fijian tourism has come to a halt and many jobs have still not returned, some may never.”
For SIDS, the Prime Minister said they needed resources and not regulations better suited to larger labour markets.
He also highlighted some of Fiji’s strategic efforts in containing COVID-19.
“After decisively containing the virus, we launched a ‘COVID-Safe Economic Recovery’, re-opened much of our domestic economy.
“Our workplaces are operating in line with tailor-made, COVID-safe operation plans and we’ve launched a mobile application dubbed careFIJI that speeds up contact tracing efforts, if ever necessary.”
The five-day global summit consists of five regional and three global events.
