Sugar Minister Charan Jeath Singh has addressed the shortage of laborers in the cane farming sector by recruiting farmers from Bangladesh to work in his sugarcane farms in Labasa, reported Fiji Times.
Mr. Singh confirmed to The Fiji Times that nine Bangladeshi workers, who paid for their airfares, have been engaged on a three-year contract basis.
“They paid their expenses to come and work here,” Mr. Singh stated. “I will reimburse their fare if they finish their contract in three years.”
The minister highlighted that the shortage of laborers in Labasa’s sugarcane farming sector necessitated the recruitment of workers from Bangladesh.
“This is my first foreign hire project,” Mr. Singh remarked. “They are not sugarcane farmers but are farm workers, so they can work on sugarcane and vegetable farms. And if this is successful, I can get other farmers to also bring in other teams.”
Mr. Singh affirmed that the Bangladeshi workers would also be available for hire by other sugarcane farmers in the area.
“There won’t be too much work on my two sugarcane farms, so what I do is to try to get other farmers to take advantage of their coming to Fiji,” he explained.
The recruitment process involved a recruiting agent based in Australia with an office in Bangladesh. “When we require a welder, painter, or a joiner, we tell them and the agent will search for the workers,” Mr. Singh added. “And they look at their police records and look at their history and they can get that paperwork done and bring it to us. So, in my case, I had applied for 12 and only managed to get nine workers approved.”
