The Fiji Higher Education Commission aims to develop a five year Workforce Development Strategy so that Fijians find employment.

This was revealed by Commission Director, Linda Aumua during the scrutiny of the FHEC 2016 annual report to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Social Affairs.

Aumua says in order to develop the strategy, the Commission will work with relevant stakeholders to gather data on employment demands.

“When you can identify what the needs of the economy are then you can actually drive institutions to drive what the need seems to be. Currently, we have industries that identify within each of their sectors of what they wish to have but at the same time we need to build qualifications to address what is needed this could be in tourism, mining, security, agriculture. We’re doing that but we need a national approach for the economy.”

Aumua says based on the demands, the Commission will drive education in the given fields.

She says currently the higher education institutions are finding difficulties in identifying the demands and this is due to the fact that many organizations are pushing their own agenda instead of driving the demands of the economy.

Hence, the FHEC believes a collaborative strategy would be the best solution in reducing unemployment rates.