$5M to retain employees skillset
Institutions that provide professional upskilling training schemes would need to be creative in delivering training programmes to suit employee’s needs.
This is after concerns were raised by business heads and employers during the Fiji Commerce and Employers Federation symposium yesterday on how to maintain the skills of laid off employees.
With a budget allocation of $4.9 million to Fiji National University of which $5m is for upskilling training, FCEF board trustee Jenny Seeto said a lot more thinking needs to be done to divert these trainings to a local level.
“I suggest that with the FNU levy, we have all these training institutions but why don’t we take these trainings to the workplace.
“I know there are apprenticeship schemes where they do that but when we look at small to medium enterprises (SMEs), retail shops, they do not have the capacity to send people to trainings.
“The SMEs and little businesses who do contribute to the levy, they are the ones who are not making use of the levy because they feel that the training was not appropriate to them.
“A lot more thinking and creativity into delivering training that’s relevant, not training that’s just going to give you a certificate for the sake of a certificate.
“But how can we really deliver training that would make our people work better, work smarter and be more productive.” she said.
Fiji Fish Marketing Group
Similar sentiments were shared by the Fiji Fish Marketing Group financial controller Anabel Ali.
“We have been the second highest exporter to the US, this is latest 2016 figures where Fishing contributed close to $200 million to the economy,” Ms Ali said.
“The world pandemic actually meant for us the world market shutdown completely on us.
“The US market completely shut down, New Zealand, Australia shut down progressively.
“Whilst we in the Pacific we are trying to find a way to actually still maintain other markets like South Africa started supplying fish also the demand that was existing at much cheaper prices that we could offer. “So all that happened between March, April and May.”
The fishing company had already laid off 280 employees last month as apart of its cost cutting measures in light of COVID-19.
She said along with these were 70 plus highly skilled workers that the company needed to retain.
“These are captains, specialised long line fishing men and these are skills that were developed over 35 years and suddenly they are gone.” She added that was a big drain in the industry.
Capacity building
Munro Leys Law partner Nicholas Barnes said the number one issue for employers was what they would be doing about employees as they can no longer afford to keep.
“How do you treat them?
“Do you just say that because of his pandemic, I can no longer afford to keep you so you have to leave and that’s the end,” he said.
He said with all the skills that these employees have, these need to be converted into something into a useful way.