The Ministry of Trade and Commerce will be working with Police and other agencies to monitor business operations.

This comes as businesses cannot go back to operating in the usual manner as they will now have to abide by the minimum COVID safe measures.

Permanent Secretary for Trade and Commerce, Shaheen Ali, says their first line of defense in ensuring businesses are compliant is the Police Force.

Permanent Secretary for Trade and Commerce, Shaheen Ali

Ali adds that conducting secondary inspections and liaising with businesses will be done with assistance from the Fijian Competition and Consumer Commission.

He says there have also been discussions with big corporate bodies and industry associations on the protocols that need to be followed, protocols that apply to certain businesses and safety measures that are non-negotiable.

“What standards that the businesses should keep in order to open in a COVID safe manner. So these are some of the measures that we use”.

For those businesses we are requiring them to provide transportation to their employees because that is a greater surety to maintain the work/home bubble and maintain the integrity of that.”

Ali earlier highlighted that businesses in Nadi and Lautoka can operate except for high risk businesses.

However, for the Lami, Suva, Nausori containment zone, only essential and approved businesses are allowed to operate.

The Ministry of Commerce and Trade, is working on protocols to allow high risk businesses to open.