The Permanent Secretary for Employment, Productivity, and Industrial Relations, Osea Cawaru today received a courtesy visit from Ms Kristy Nowland, the Pacific Labour Facility (PLF) Gender Disability Social Inclusion (GEDSI) Manager, and Ms Sally Baker, the Disability Social Inclusion (DSI) Advisor with the PLF to collaborate and provide support towards disability inclusion under the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme.
The PLF representatives thanked the Permanent Secretary for the opportunity to meet with him and the National Employment Center (NEC) Team on the new opportunities for workers with disability from Pacific Island countries to work in Australia.
“The objective of our visit today is to establish a good working relationship with the National Employment Centre as Fiji’s Labour Sending Unit under the PALM Scheme; agree on a way forward for implementing the Disability Inclusion Pathway design as well as provide support and raise awareness on key GEDSI topics for labour mobility including women participation,” said PLF Advisor Ms Baker.
Furthermore, the GEDSI Policy has two objectives which are to have diversity in the programs, to increase the number of women, youth, and people with disability participating in the program; and to reduce risk and increase benefits for workers, and their families, and communities.
“A review was conducted on the GEDSI strategy in early 2021 and one of the strong recommendations was for the PLF to strengthen their approach to disability inclusions.”
“In line with that recommendation, we have done some consultations with stakeholders across the labour facility and we also reached out to the labour sending units of the 10 Pacific Island countries including Timor-Leste who might be interested in working in this area, Fiji and the Solomon Islands agree to be participants of the pilot,” said Ms Baker.
Ms Baker is also working with the Fiji Ministry of Education through the DFAT Education Sector Support Program in reviewing the Ministry’s disability policy focusing on mainstream schools.
“ It’s important to have that link in supporting access to better education for children with disabilities and then through PLF in looking for work opportunities in Australia through labour mobility,” she added.
Permanent Secretary for Employment, Osea Cawaru added that this is a good opportunity and this is something that dovetails well with the current policies that the Employment Ministry developed around this area.
“The Ministry looks forward to participating under this pilot initiative and in promoting employment opportunities for people with disabilities in all Fijian Government initiatives such as the labour mobility scheme with the support of the Australian Government under the Vuvale partnership,” said PS Cawaru.
Mr Cawaru thanked the PLF representatives for their time to meet with the team as well as their support towards all discussions around the disability inclusion pilot that will be conducted with the Ministry team and other relevant stakeholders this week.
In addition, he thanked the Australian Government for providing this great opportunity for our Fijians living with disabilities, as well as for continuing to support Fijian women.