$816,000 Bonus For Fiji Airports Employees
Acting Prime Minister and Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum could not have said it any clearer - Fiji Airports is the premier state-owned enterprise in Fiji.
His made these comments during the bonus announcement of $816,004.62 to 540 employees of Fiji Airports yesterday.
It reinforced the state-owned enterprise’s recorded profit before tax and depreciation of $93.7 million in the current financial year according to executive chairperson Faiz Khan.
This was compared to $89.5 million for 2017.
Regain property
The other major announcement by Mr Khan were plans to regain airport property sold previously and which bordered the present boundary.
He said the land was sold during previous governments’ time and Fiji Airports would have to pay a substantial amount of money to regain these lands.
The Fiji National University at Namaka sits on one of these lands and Mr Khan said the university may have to be relocated, in its long-term plan.
“If you look at all four corners of the airport, in the past some people, in their wisdom gave our land away,” he said.
He referred to the Naisoso residential direction, the entry to Naisoso from the Queens Highway and FNU.
“One of the things that have come out of the Master Plan is we may have to relocate FNU.
“Now what this requires is that land we had given away, we now had to acquire back at a cost – but at a huge cost. “That is the biggest challenge we are going to have in the next five years.”
Mr Khan said to achieve this, the company needed the efforts of all its staff.
“Over the next five years, we have many challenges ahead of us. “We need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to repair this airport for the next 100 years.
“I would like to say to you that 2018 has been a phenomenal year thanks to your effort and hard work.”
An asset value exercise was carried out on Fiji Airports after $129 million was spent on its upgrade. “One of the key things that came out of the asset revaluation exercise is that the assets value has increased by $260 million. Of course that in turn reflects shareholders fund.
“Colleagues these are financial numbers and have been made possible through each and every one of your efforts.
“We found that once we effectively communicate with each other we are able to achieve our goals faster than we could otherwise.”
One of Airports Fiji’s oldest employees, Apenisa Nagatalevu, 62, said in the past employees never used to receive bonuses.
He told Mr Khan there were many broken promises and staff were promised increment in salaries and wages but never received it. Meanwhile, Mr Sayed-Khaiyum said the reality was Nadi Airport was now looking nice and clean but if this was not maintained it could soon again be rated one of the worst airports in the world. “You have a very good structure in place within your organisation and you have very good infrastructure hard infrastructure but the trick is to maintain it and expand it,” Mr Sayed-Khaiyum said.
“I think the point your executive chairperson made, is that there needs to be a sense of pride amongst all of you.”