The Fijian government has reiterated its commitment towards continued engagement with the International Labour Organization.
Labour Minister Semi Koroilavesau told Fiji One News government wants all issues sorted before the ILO Tripartite mission.
The Fiji Commerce and Employers Federation says the concerns of the labour workforce and employers should be adequately addressed.
The International Labour Organization is sending a tripartite mission to Fiji to review the obstacles to the submission of a joint implementation report and consider the pending matters in the complaint lodged against Fiji.
Fiji was found to be in breach of 6 international law conventions of the ILO.
The Tripartite Mission will prepare a report which is to be submitted to the March 2016 session of the ILO Governing Body.
“The Federation is looking forward to the tripartite delegation which is expected to be in the country from the 25th of this month. We have been advised that ERAB will sit on the 20th of this month. It gives us a week before the mission to sort of reach an agreement so we’re hopeful we’ll be able to achieve something with our other social partners in addressing the issues that are before the governing body of ILO in relation to article 26 complaint” said Nezbitt Hazelman – CEO Fiji Commerce Employers Federation
Earlier today the Fiji Commerce and Employers Federation met with the Minister for Employment, Productivity and Industrial Relations Semi Koroilavesau.
The Minister says Government is looking forward to ironing out issues when the meeting gets underway with the ILO Tripartite team.
Koroilavesau is not part of the ERAB meetings but reports of the meetings are presented to him.
” We addressed issues in relation to the issues that are before the governing body and basically we’ve been advised of governments position on some of the areas. Of course we’re an independent body part of the ERAB we have our own opinion on these issues and we’ll make that known to the tripartite mission ” said Hazelman
“The Federation has been very very clear from day one in that in any of these discussions that we have we need to put the country first and we’re a young democracy with a new constitution and we need to ensure economic growth continues to take place in this country and through this the creation of new jobs whilst we’re mindful of the rights of workers we also have to have our thumb on the nail so to speak in terms of ensuring that we have adequate jobs when I say jobs I’m talking about decent jobs that will be able to go around and that’s been our approach on the issue since its inception some years back”
The ILO team is expected to meet Government , the Employers Federation and the Union representatives.