FIJI WORKFORCE

Shariff Shah, Savusavu

Please give this some thought.

- 11 national holidays

- Five bereavement leaves

- 12 sick leave days

-14 days leave with pay

- 30 days rain (minimum)

- 19 days absent without sick sheet, if 20 no leave pay

- 52 Saturdays

- 52 Sundays

- Another 10 days off to attend to others weddings / functions/ watching 7s late at night or Monday morning finals like USA 7S, etc. Total 205 days.

So 365 days minus 205 days equals 160 days- that workers actually work in Fiji. Then there is NO worker who works for full nine hours. Maximum two hours out of nine working hours per day is taken out on Facebook, cell phone, smoking, missed the bus, or simply talanoa. Then comes mokusiga ,say one hour per day, total three hours per day x 160 days come to 480 hours / nine hours per day and this equals to another 53 days. So 365 - 205 - 53 days = 107 days. That is 107 days or 3.5 or four months that construction workers work every year in Fiji.

How to survive? The labour laws are empowering the workers, period. Has the Minister of Labour thought about this?

No wonder foreign workers are pouring into our country. They get no holidays, no Saturdays or Sundays, no backaches or diarrhoea. They work whole year and get three weeks per year break to visit their families. That's it.

I am already thinking about foreign workers to join or replace my local workers.

SHARIFF SHAH, will receive a Philips 1L SS Rice cooker from Courts as our Letter of the Month April winner.