Consistent training to upgrade workers’ skills may help close the experience gap created by the skills drain currently plaguing Fiji’s workforce.
For Basic Industries Ltd (BIL), this is a core part of its effort to retain workers, as “greener pastures” becomes a strong pull factor for labour in all sectors of the economy.
“Losing skills from Fiji is a problem for every industry, whether it’s construction or tourism, or any other industry in the country,” said BIL chief executive officer Ritesh Dass.
“We are losing people and I think that challenge will remain with us. Other countries are also losing people to other places, so we’ll have this churn of skilled people moving from one country to another. What we need to do is answer the question of how do we build resilience here.
“So it’s about training our locals very quickly. We have in-house programs where we’re getting fresh graduates in, putting them through a fast track learning program and getting them the job. And it has had very promising outcomes.
“We’re also getting people from abroad with the view that they’ll come in, train the locals so that when they go back three years later, we have locals who are quite capable of training to take on the job.
“This is a cycle that we have to keep on doing because this churn of talents will potentially continue.
“We can’t stop people from going outside for better opportunities. So we just have to work with what we’ve got.”
Speaking to the The Fiji Times during a meeting of Fiji’s engineering community in Suva at the weekend, Mr Dass commended the Government on it’s decision to open the door to Fijians living overseas to return home whenever they want.
“It’s a great move by Government and we hope that through that, the people who have gone actually do come back,” Mr Dass said.
“One thing I find out is the people from Fiji can never get away from Fiji so Fiji is still home for them and I hope that calling comes through and some of them actually do come back to Fiji, which should help our case.”
He said apart from the necessary investment in training, BIL was also looking at a worker exchange program with overseas companies.
“We’re also looking at how we can partner with some of these companies overseas where we can send people from here to there for a one month or three to four weeks period where they can go and learn what good looks like and come back much more learned and much more experienced,” Mr Dass said.
“So that exchange program is something that we’ve started to talk to a couple of industries about, couple of communities about and hopefully next year that’s something we want to begin as a program.”
