The National Employment Centre has been in full action for the past few years and is probably one of the busiest arms of Government offering formal employment service, foreign employment service and Fiji volunteer service. It would be sheer ignorance on our part if we fail to acknowledge that most people registering themselves at the NEC are doing so targeting the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) Scheme. Each time a group of Fijians pose for a media picture with travel documents and employment contracts in their hands, it sends a feeling of joy across most of our hearts. However, it also sends a jolt of shock across the nation as we grapple with the fact that our skilled workers are leaving in droves. This article will look at the problem in the tourism and construction sectors and relate with the planned increase of vocational centres. We will also talk about the interim need for foreign workers to fill the gaps while we try to educate as many people as possible for our own permanent solutions. This is not a political article.
The hotel and tourism sector
A $3 billion investment plan for 42 tourism projects aimed at achieving 4824 rooms as announced by Tourism Minister Viliame Gavoka last week should bring a sense of optimism to stakeholders and our economy as a whole because of our heavy dependence on tourism as the mainstay of the economy. We may get investors to build rooms to fill the gaps in the tourism industry, but at the current rate of skilled worker migration we are looking at a situation where we may not have the manpower to service about 5000 rooms. Our chefs and kitchen hands are all going. The joiners and welders and even the gardeners working at maintenance departments of hotels and resorts are leaving like never before. The delivery truck drivers are adding bus licenses to their credentials and are driving in New Zealand now. I cannot speculate how good the migration agency business is or how much fees they are collecting, but they are surely killing it with the unprecedented number of our young people, I’d say under 45, knocking on their doors/websites.
The construction and infrastructure sectors
Holders of Level IV and Level V Trade Certificates (Diplomas) are difficult to convince to stay. Why would they listen though? They would, if we paid them $27/hour as a starting rate if they were experienced enough. Not possible, not now, not 10 years later. We just don’t have that economic capacity to sustain such rates for our tradespeople. It is a fact that our skilled people are a sought-after commodity elsewhere. Holders of Level III Trade Certificates are now also queuing up for jobs overseas, and they are absolutely in with a real chance because we simply do not have enough Level IV and V people for the overseas market! But wait, we are discussing Fiji’s skill situation here. Yes, but we must realise that our skilled worker numbers were quite healthy before the skilled migration trend rampantly set in. Nobody’s fault. Mid-level supervisors and foremen in the infrastructure sector are resigning from $8-9/hour jobs here to start at $27/hour in New Zealand. I know because this has happened right under my nose in the past few months and those men are occasionally sponsoring their former workmates here with kava barrels and Christmas parties. The boys here are absolutely loving it! The problem is the vacuum created. What happens next is that we scramble to promote the immediate lower ranking workers, and the results are better forgotten. The influx of Bangladeshi nationals now is proof of the drastic immediate need for Fiji to fill the void created by skilled migration. After some years Bangladesh might cry the same cry we are crying, but that’s their problem. Construction companies are essentially ordering foreign workers now, and it’s nobody’s fault. Imagine the remittances families in Bangladesh are receiving from Fiji, similar to the remittances Fijian families are receiving from family members working in Australia and New Zealand. The USA has serious skilled worker shortages too, but they don’t have to worry as the illegal migration situation is their answer to their problem. It’s not funny, at least not funny to my yaca who could be POTUS again soon. Fiji is at least filling the gaps legally.
Then and now
I will refrain from drawing comparisons with the past government’s policies regarding vocational training. When it was announced sometime last week that Government was working on adding 30 more vocational centres to the existing 32 centres, I immediately sent a question to a very senior government figure and he replied that vocational centres were there and working well before and that technical colleges had been a big failure with $30million poured in them. Fair response, but we need to see the plan working. During the weekend I ran into another very senior government figure at a prominent supermarket and struck up a conversation with the very simple and down-to-earth man. He informed me that vocational centres will equip students at Certifi cate I and Certificate II levels, and that after graduating from vocational schools, they will be able to attain III, IV and V levels at tertiary institutions. He simply said that government’s aim was to get young graduates with trade skills to be “work-ready”. That made sense to me. There is no hiding from the fact that most of our trade skills graduates are not work-ready, and I have seen this firsthand when they fail to put into practice what they have learnt in school. I remember back in the ’90s in Lautoka when vocational students at certain schools were actually fixing engines and building furniture and houses. They had trained with very skillful masters and most of their thing was practical. Last weekend, while at Garden City, I thought of saying hello to Mr Wah and the evergreen Mrs Wah. He put it aptly. Being an old timer and a realist, he talked about “no-school” old farmers who were experts in practice and compared them to the highly theoretical current agriculture graduates who know just about everything, in theory only though. He admitted to having to offload his massive investment because he simply couldn’t find the people to help him maintain the complex. He joked that almost everyone was going to work overseas, and that those who have still not gone probably can’t get a visa due to health, age or police clearance issues. We had a subdued laugh about it, subdued because it was actually a tragedy we were discussing.
The future
At the end of this year we are anticipating a total of 62 vocational centres, all at secondary schools, like many years ago before technical colleges were set up. To me, it does not matter what we call them. I could call them technical college or vocational centre, or maybe trade school, but the way we are losing tradespeople to Australia and New Zealand, these centres will basically be the factories or assembly lines for the Trans-Tasman job markets. So what do we do? Churn out more graduates so more can qualify to migrate? Or hope that we have many work-ready tradespeople and not all leave? They will go. Our people leaving for greener pastures do so for the sake of better livelihoods for their families. Many of us aren’t going, but we cannot deny that we have plans for our children to earn well and live well, elsewhere. Are foreign nationals our answer to the skilled worker shortage problem? A few company bosses who have been forced to recruit Bangladeshi workers have admitted that they are actually good with work. In the same breath they would openly berate our own workers for not being good with work. I have tried to correct a few of these employers that our workers have more reasons to leave than to stay. The Bangladeshi workers also have more reasons to leave their homes to work in Fiji and even Australia than to stay and slug it out in Bangladesh.
Conclusion
The intriguing question is whether we have reached a point of no return in terms of our ability to retain our skilled and experienced tradespeople. The likely answer being uttered by the reader is that we simply can’t make them stay if better opportunities and a higher quality of life beckon abroad. The vocational centres will almost certainly play a positive role in addressing the need for more skilled people. Let’s say, even if half of them leave, we have at least the other half to stay and help Fiji, of course until they eventually leave too. However, every year the vocational centres must continue churning out graduates who will remain and work in Fiji for a few years at least until they have attained the MQR’s for the overseas markets. I do not intend to talk about the politics involved in all this. I care about policies and investments working to fulfill the purposes they are intended for. As the senior government figure said at the supermarket, it will take some time to see the results. Sir, if you are reading this, we will patiently wait for the results. In the interim though, we must get foreign workers to keep our vital industries running. I frowned upon the idea some years back, but now I realise we don’t have an option. Bangladesh better also invest some money into their own vocational centres so that they can sustainably keep sending workers to Fiji, just like Fiji’s investment, for ours and for our neighbours’ needs. Or maybe we could partner with Bangladesh institutions on vocational centres. This is making me mad, and it’s not meant to be funny. Let’s wait for the results though.
DONALD SINGH is China Railway No 5 manager Navua zone and previously the manager Suva zone. The views expressed in this article is the author’s and does not necessarily reflect the views of this newspaper.
