Jobs still for road workers, says FRA chief executive

Fiji Roads Authority (FRA) chief executive officer Jonathan Moore has confirmed that China Railway Fifth Group (CR5G) has been awarded the maintenance contract for Central Division.

“We run three maintenance con tracts throughout Fiji; Central (Eastern is part of Central), Western and Northern Division,” Mr Moore said.

“The Central and Northern contracts started in 2013 with Fulton Hogan Hiways for over a four-year period. We had granted an extension for one year whilst we organised for the new contract for the Central Division.”

He said they had issued a tender for the contractors to put a price for their work and the contractors submitted their tenders.

“We assess tenders based on many factors; the capacity of the contractor, quality of work, contractor’s ability to understand the work required and for the price. When we balanced these factors, FHH were not the most competitive to do the work required and the CR5G offered a more competitive and a better value offer than FHH did.” Mr Moore said the amount of work that they are planning to do in the future would be more than what they were currently doing which would require more people. “When CR5G takes over in January, we will require more people and the workers at FHH have been trained over for many years in road works and we do not want to lose them .”

He said many, if not all of those workers that are currently working under FHH whether directly or as a subcontractor would still be working on the roads in Fiji.

“We are looking to see if we can employ some of them at the FRA as well. We still need people working on the roads.”

Mr Moore said they were conscious of the workers potentially losing the job with FHH and they were working with Fulton Hogan and other contractors so that there is minimal disruption in people’s lives.

When we balanced these factors, FHH were not the most competitive to do the work required and the CR5G offered a more competitive and a better value offer than FHH did. Jonathan Moore Fiji Roads Authority CEO