Workers ponder future
IN 1988, the air of uncertainty hanging over the future of Fiji Forests Industries (FFI) worried its workers. According to an article published by on March 7 that year, more than 100 families who depended on the company for their livelihoods did not know whether they had jobs or not.
For 42-year-old former Tailevu villager Necani Talevakarua, it was as if the skies had come down.
Mr Talevakarua, a leading hand in the company’s timber drying section at Malau in Labasa, was worried about the education of his three children.
He left his village in Nakelo (on Viti Levu) with his wife Mereisi, for Labasa in search of a job which took him through the main entrance of FFI’s mill in 1979.
“The initial years were hard,” he admitted, “but I had to work very hard — leaving home early in the morning and coming back late at night in order to be able to support my family.”
He started as a casual worker, skinning logs for the veneer lathe before he was made a temporary employee.
In a matter of 11 months, Talevakarua’s punctuality and good performance were recognised by the management.
These strong points earned him a promotion to become a permanent employee.
He had been a leading hand in the past six years.
His earnings from the company had enabled him to educate his eldest son Kemueli through secondary school.
In 1987, his 21-year-old son Kemueli was selected out of hundreds of applicants as an apprentice with the Public Works Department.
This did his father proud and instilled a sense of satisfaction for having begun to accomplish what he had set out to do.
His other children were Marika Balawakula, who was a Class Five student at Saint Mary’s School and Ilaitia Beka, who was due to start school the following year.
Apart from the education of his children,
Talevakarua had also purchased furniture worth $1000 on credit.
And he had to pay $2000 to the bank for a loan to extend his wooden home at Nailawa.
“I do not know how I am going to cope with all these commitments if the company closes for good,” he said.
Vaneer grader, Ram Sewalk, who had been working for the company for 20 years, was more worried than Mr Talevakarua.
He had a child in secondary school and four in primary school at Naleba outside Labasa.
“I don’t know how I am going to feed my family and send the children to school if the company closed,” he said.
Mr Sewalk said he supported the company’s request for the government to step in and help it continue.
Machine operator Mohammed Tahir said he would look for a job elsewhere to support two of his children who were attending Naleba College and one at primary school.
“I still cannot believe that FFI will close one day. It is such a big and reliable company which has been doing well in Fiji,” he said, as an employee of 11 years.
Another veneer grader, Keshwan Nair, who had been with the company for six years, said he was able to secure a bank loan to build a house on the strength of his job with FFI.
The repayment was his big worry too.
Cabinet and the company’s top guns, led by its chief executive Fred Flynn, had been meeting in Suva to find ways of bailing out the company.
But for the worried quartet and their work mates, the sooner the company resumed operations, the better it would be.
The initial years were hard but I had to work very hard — leaving home early in the morning and coming back late at night in order to be able to support my family
– Necani Talevakarua