Update: 8:23PM EIGHTY eight people were hired by Fiji’s Ministry of Employment and Industrial Relations over the past week ending on April 21 to go out and collect information and data as part of the review of the national minimum wage.
Minister Jone Usamate said when developing a national minimum wage, it was based on a sound methodology.
“First of all, one has to collect information and data before one decides to prescribe what the national minimum wage should be. We are not going to work that we are just going to pluck a figure of $4 out of the atmosphere and instantly apply it, but we have to look at the ramifications of this on the people themselves who are most marginalised and at the same time, we have to remember that this national minimum wage is for the unskilled people, those who do not have much options,” Mr Usamate told Parliament yesterday.
“We also have to make sure that we are looking at the interests of the small and micro enterprises. If you raise the wage too high for those small and micro enterprises, we have to think of their ability to be able to cope.
“So all of these issues, we have taken into account. If you raise the wages too high, it has an impact on inflation, so we need to take that into account.”
Mr Usamate said they also needed to take into account the competitiveness of local industries, relative to those offshore.
“We are going to base it on sound judgment of all the factors that need to be taken into the account.”
