For years, Fijians have been migrating to New Zealand because of the high marketability of Fiji’s labour force abroad, said Reserve Bank of Fiji governor Ariff Ali.
“We lose a lot of skilled people so we complain about them,” Mr Ali said.
“But on the other hand, a lot of them send remittance back to Fiji as a highlighted area.
“Over the last three years or so, we have lost about 20,000 highly skilled people to New Zealand.”
Mr Ali said this was an issue for most businesses or manufacturers.
“We train people and we want to do this not just to New Zealand, but also the rest of the world.
“Fiji’s footprint is New Zealand’s success; your rugby matches are not entirely because of New Zealand.
“It’s also due to our people going there.”
Fiji Commerce and Employers Federation representative Edward Bernard said the number of workers in New Zealand originally from Fiji had far exceeded the figures quoted by Mr Ali.
“The recognised seasonal workers in New Zealand, Fiji has more workers there than in Australia,’ Mr Bernard said.
“I think maybe that number is a bit understated at the moment, but we know in the last at least five years, we lost about 140,000 people to both Australia and New Zealand.”
Mr Bernard said the Government needed to focus on the labour market.
“If we can do that, it’ll be good, then we can see how we can then divert those that are registering at the National Employment Centre to the local labour market.
“If there’s a time that they will need to go overseas, that’s fine, at least you plug the gaps now.”
