GOOGLE is committed to hiring local resources and providing digital upskilling programs to address the issue of brain drain in the Pacific, said Google’s Product and Service Innovation Global Submarine Cable system lead Shirshendu Bhattacharya.
Mr Bhattacharya made the comment in response to a question-and-answer session at the Pacific Fiber and Training Conference where Cadmus Group Regional Hub Pacific representative Anju Mangal raised the issue of brain drain and the availability of skills training.
“I want to focus on the people aspect especially the brain drain issue, Minister Manoa mentioned that 4000 people will be training in terms of jobs and employment and I think this is important because having an ICT facility is great but can google support a lot of the digital skills , upskilling etcetera for those 4000 people or more not just in Fiji, but across the Pacific,” Ms Mangal said.
In his response, Mr Bhattacharya highlighted Google’s practice of hiring local employees for its projects.
“One of the things which we believe, and our group would be more comfortable taking the charge, so our idea is that when we are hiring resources, we want to hire local resources,” he said.
“When we are doing this work in the Pacific, our idea is that we don’t want people to fly from the US or from Singapore to come and do the work. We want to have local resources.”
Mr Bhattacharya also placed emphasis on Google’s plans for training programs in the Pacific region.
“We are also trying to do something where we train our people, but Google is a different group. I cannot say things about them, but we are trying to do some programs here on cyber security, on project management and a few other courses, so that we can upskill them.”
Note: This article was first published on the print version of the Fiji Times dated August 14, 2025