For six years, Fiji’s employers paid a levy under criminal threat — fines, imprisonment for non-payment — collected specifically, by law, to train their own workers. For six of those years, the government kept 90 per cent of that money for purposes the levy was never created to fund, without employer consent and without meaningful recourse.
That is not a funding dispute. It is a broken promise enforced by criminal penalty, and it deserves to be named as one before anyone credits this month’s partial fix as the end of the story. This month’s budget restores half of what was taken. It does not restore what those six years actually cost — in skills never built, in $FJ8000 paid per worker recruited from overseas because no local one was trained, and in the 95 job categories still sitting empty today because the fund built to fill them was, for years, spent on almost anything else.
50 years of solemn purpose
The levy began in 1973 under the Fiji National Training Council, funded by a compulsory 1 per cent deduction from every registered employer’s payroll, enforceable by law with fines and potential imprisonment for non-payment. For 45 years, the arrangement held: employers paid under threat of prosecution, and in return, every dollar trained their workers. The Fiji National Training Levy Order 1988 formalised that link explicitly, leaving no ambiguity about what the money was for. The scheme survived two institutional transformations — into the Training Productivity Authority of Fiji in 2003, then into Fiji National University’s National Training and Productivity Centre in 2011 — without breaking that promise once. It broke in 2018.
The diversion
The 2018–19 Budget redirected the levy without employer consent. Under the new formula, half of all collections went to a Government General Practitioners scheme, 40 per cent to the Accident Compensation Commission Fiji, and only 10 per cent remained for the training the levy legally exists to fund. Employers were still prosecutable for non-payment of a levy now spent overwhelmingly on healthcare and compensation schemes they had no say in creating. That is the injustice at the centre of this piece: coercion retained in full, purpose abandoned by nine-tenths.
The arithmetic of loss
Between 2019 and 2024, Fiji’s businesses contributed approximately $FJ152.4 million to the levy. Less than $FJ$15.2m reached actual training grants. Roughly $FJ137m was redirected elsewhere. In 2022 alone, about $FJ23m was collected against just $FJ2.3m released for training. The average employer, according to the Fiji Commerce and Employers Federation, recovered roughly $FJ376 a year — about $FJ7 per employee — from a fund they were legally compelled to fund at gunpoint of criminal law.
What the diversion cost
The National Skills Gap Assessment Survey identified 95 occupations where employers cannot find suitably qualified local workers. Businesses report spending roughly $FJ8000 to recruit a single worker from overseas — a cost that dwarfs the training grant most employers ever recovered. In 2024, the United Nations flagged concern over Fiji’s progress on Sustainable Development Goal 8, decent work and economic growth. A scheme built specifically to prevent this outcome was, for six years, funded at a tenth of its intended level while the shortage it existed to prevent grew steadily worse.
The regulator problem underneath the money
Beneath the funding dispute sits a structural conflict rarely discussed with the same intensity as the dollar figures. Section 35A(2)(a) and (d) of the FNU Amendment Decree 2010 gives Fiji National University’s own National Training and Productivity Centre regulatory authority over the very training sector FNU itself competes in as one of the country’s largest providers. FNU collects the levy, assesses grant applications, sets regulatory standards, and runs training programmes — collector, referee, and leading player, all in one institution. One Fiji Times opinion piece put it plainly last October: no honest legal reading can call that regulatory function independent of FNU.
The fivefold fix
This month’s 2026–27 National Budget finally moved. Finance Minister Esrom Immanuel announced the Training Grant Scheme allocation rises from 0.1 per cent to 0.5 per cent of the levy — a fivefold increase — funded through the phased withdrawal of the Private GP Scheme, whose existing trust fund covers the transition. The Accident Compensation Commission Fiji retains its 0.4 per cent. A new allocation, 0.1 per cent, now funds the Fiji Learning Institute for Public Service.
Progress, not restoration
Call this what it is: real, and still nowhere near enough. Half the levy now reaches training, against the roughly ninety percent that reached it for the scheme’s first 45 years. The new 0.1 per cent allocation to FLIPS, moreover, funds public service training specifically — a legitimate public interest, but not the private-sector workforce development employers were coerced into funding since 1973. Dr Hasmukh Lal, welcoming the reform, has already called for the next step: an independent body drawing on the Higher Education Commission, the Fiji Commerce and Employers Federation, and the Public Service Commission, to take grant-claimable course approval out of FNU’s hands entirely.
A new fairness question
The reform has opened a question nobody was asking before it. Cabinet has separately decided government may access levy funds for its own training purposes, prompting a pointed response from Fiji Higher Education Commission Director Dr Eci Naisele: with most of the levy already redirected for years, and now government itself drawing on what remains, what happens to the private-sector employers who are still the only ones legally compelled to pay it under threat of prosecution?
Legal avenues that went unused
Section 29 of the Fiji National Training Act establishes a National Training Appeals Tribunal, empowered to hear challenges to levy administration decisions. Constitutional questions concerning statutory purpose and legislative authority over compulsory collections remain open to judicial interpretation. That employers pursued advocacy for seven years rather than testing this in court says something about how confident they were of a remedy through either channel.
What still needs finishing
Three things would complete what this budget has only started. First, separate the regulatory function from FNU entirely. Second, clarify in law, not merely by Cabinet decision, exactly how much of the levy the government itself may access. Third, commit to a public timetable for closing the remaining gap between 0.5 percent and full restoration.
The standard this case sets
A government that compels payment under criminal threat for one stated purpose, then redirects nine-tenths of it for six years without consent and calls a fivefold increase back to half of the original figure a solution, has set a precedent every other compulsory levy in this country should now be measured against. The training levy’s history should stand as the reference case for how long an injustice can persist, in plain sight, funded by force of law, before it is even partially undone.
Dr Sushil K Sharma BA MA MEng (RMIT) PhD (Melbourne) is a World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) Accredited Class 1 Professional Meteorologist. He is also a former Associate Professor of Meteorology at FNU. The views expressed are solely his and do not necessarily reflect the views of this newspaper.
