Fiji’s five years of positive economic growth has led to a reduction in the country’s unemployment rate with more people entering the job market.
Minister for Labour, Industrial Relations and Employment, Jone Usamate said the figures collected during the 2010-2011 survey shows that unemployment rate has come down to 6.9 per cent from the previous 8.6 per cent.
“The Reserve Bank of Fiji has registered more vacancy advertisements and the Fiji National Provident Fund says there have been more new members registering than those leaving,” Usamate said.
“What this shows is that there are jobs and people are getting employed.”
Usamate has rebutted a recent media report that 83,000 unemployed people had registered under the Ministry’s National Employment Centre (NEC) when in fact the figure was 33,000.
Usamate said the Ministry had traced 12,000 of those registered and successfully contacted 3,213 whereby it found that 70 per cent of these had either found employment, started their own business, were doing an attachment somewhere or had gone back for further studies.
“For the past four years we have had positive economic growth, which is rare for Fiji, and this year will be the fifth. We all know that when there is economic growth, more people get employed,” Usamate said.
The NEC develops and assists the unemployed to find employment and also provides quality human resource development for clients, to facilitate their absorption into the formal employment market.
SUVA, (MINFO)
