A senior opposition MP has warned of a “dangerous governance gap” in Fiji’s labour system after the Employment Minister admitted foreign workers were arriving with skills that did not match their claimed qualifications. Joseph Nand raised the alarm in Parliament on Tuesday, accusing the government’s vetting and recruitment controls of being weak and of shifting the verification burden onto local employers.
Nand said comments by Employment Minister Agni Deo Singh last week effectively confirmed systemic failings. He criticised the practice of issuing work permits before qualifications are rigorously checked, saying it was “unacceptable for the Government to issue a work permit first and then expect the employer to play private detective after the worker has already landed.” He argued that the lack of robust verification protocols allows dishonest recruitment agents to exploit the system, with photocopies of certificates treated as sufficient proof.
Pointing to regional neighbours, Nand contrasted Fiji’s approach unfavourably with Australia and New Zealand, which he said have stronger verification mechanisms to confirm foreign credentials before arrival. He warned of real costs to local businesses, saying employers routinely bear the financial burden — from airfares and visa fees to relocation costs — only to discover workers cannot perform to the required standard, undermining productivity and forcing employers to absorb unexpected losses.
Nand also pressed for concrete enforcement actions, saying the Employment Minister had identified “dishonest agents” as a primary cause, yet no public record exists of penalties, prosecutions, or a registry of blacklisted recruiters. “If the Department of Immigration is issuing permits based on data the Ministry of Employment admits is unreliable, who is actually in charge of our borders?” he asked, calling for clearer accountability and transparency across agencies involved in labour recruitment and immigration.
Minister Singh acknowledged the problem in Parliament, attributing many of the challenges to unscrupulous agents in source countries and to policy gaps inherited from the previous administration. “These were issues that we have inherited, a spill-over from the previous administration, because there were no sound policies,” he said, and pledged the government was strengthening oversight. Singh told MPs the government is pursuing a government-to-government recruitment arrangement with India to ensure workers are recruited through recognised and regulated agencies.
The minister’s comments follow other recent moves by his ministry to step up enforcement: earlier this year Singh announced plans to hire additional staff to monitor employer compliance with labour regulations, including a new emphasis on minimum wage surveillance. However, he did not provide a timeline or detailed terms for the proposed government-to-government recruitment pact with India, nor did he spell out immediate changes to qualification-verification processes or how cross-agency responsibility would be resolved.
The exchange in Parliament brings renewed focus to migrant labour controls and accountability for recruitment intermediaries. Opposition calls for a publicly accessible list of sanctioned recruitment agents, clearer verification protocols before permits are issued, and tighter inter-agency coordination set out a specific agenda that the government will need to address if it is to reassure employers and protect the integrity of Fiji’s labour market.
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