Minister for Labour, Industrial Relations and Employment, Jone Usamate (fifth left) with facilitators and participants at the Quality Management Systems Audit training. Photo: MINISTRY OF LABOUR , INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS AND EMPLOYMENT
By MARAIA VULA
The Ministry of Labour, Industrial Relations and Employment will try to improve its level of performance to provide more efficient and effective services to the employment sector.
This was confirmed by the Labour Minister Jone Usumate at the official opening of a two-day workshop on Quality Management System Audit training at Des Vos on the Park yesterday.
“We’ll keep improving our level of performance to make sure our customers use our services and see a lot of improvements in our trends of delivering services,” Mr Usamate said.
“We have decided to setup our processes in accordance to the International Standard Organisation 9001, that is the international standard on how to organise an effective organisation.”
The training is being attended by Ministry of Labour officials and other government ministry officials. It is facilitated by two Independent European Certification Lead Auditors from Malaysia.
Malaysian facilitator, Jimmy Chua said: “This will be an important training for the ministry to provide effective and efficient services to the people of Fiji.
“There is no certification system in Fiji at the moment. However the Ministry of labour is establishing their system. But if you look at Fiji today the number of certification is very few.
“I think more organizations should stick to ISO certification in order to make sure that organisation practices are of international standards and operational to fulfill customer needs,” Mr Chua said.
Labour Ministry ISO establishment
Mr Usumate said: “We have already established the international standards in place to identify our procedures and processes that we’ve met.
“People trained through this training their job is to be able to audit whether our system is good enough or not, the procedures and process laid out have been addressed or not.
“At the end of the day they will be constantly checking to make sure the standards and systems at the ministry conform to international standard.
“In this system we hope to provide better services and that’s what government is here for to build a better Fiji for our citizens.”
Mr Usumate added that no other government ministry in Fiji is using the ISO standards, it’s mostly used by private sector but he believes they can learn from it and utilise it also.
Business communities
Most of the business communities in Fiji comply with our Labour legislation says Mr Usumate.
“If we have a minimum wage for securities, owners of security companies will have to comply with it but for those not complying the ministry will make sure they comply.
“If there are businesses already in compliance with our labour laws they don’t need to worry about anything.
“This training will help our abilities to address those that are under paying their workers, not paying their Fiji National Provident Fund levies, maternity leave and their sick leave.”
Good employer traits
Mr Usumate said a good employer should make sure they comply with the law but if they don’t this kind of training will help clamp down much harder on those not complying with the law.