ACTING Prime Minister and Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum has urged employers in the private sector to ensure the rights of their workers are protected especially women, the disabled and the unskilled.

While addressing participants of the 2016 Fiji Commerce and Employers Federation (FCEF) Top Executives conference in Nadi over the weekend, he explained those minority groups were still being exploited by unscrupulous employers.

“Domestic violence is an issue for all of you,” Mr Sayed-Khaiyum said.

“Most of the people who are cleaning your toilet, who are waiting on you at the restaurant, who are helping out in the kitchen and who are waiting on you until you pay the bill are women.

“If they are being bashed up at home or wherever, what do you think their level of absenteeism or their level of productivity would be?

“They won’t be able to come to work because of a black eye. In the same way we are talking about persons with disabilities.

“During the budget allocations consultations, I met a gentleman who can only speak through sign language and he works in Lautoka.

“He was being paid a third of the salary of what everybody else was doing at exactly the same work. They were doing the same job. When he got sick they said they were not going to pay him sick leave.

“There was absolutely no reward in terms of his level of output or productivity.”

He added overseas companies working in Fiji were employing people from other countries because of a lack of semi- skilled workers.

“There is, for example, 13 technical colleges that have been set up to address the semi skill set that we are lacking.

“For example, we have two construction companies that have paid workers coming in from the Philippines and Indonesia.

“The people who are laying the tiles at Nadi Airport are from Samoa.

“A New Zealand company brought them over because they could not find people who are semi-skilled. That’s the reality.”