There can be more employment opportunities for Fijians in the United Arab Emirates.

Fiji’s Ambassador to the UAE, Robin Nair says Fiji has established itself well in the region especially in the Airline industry, tourism as well as in the health services sector.

Nair adds with more than 30 Fijians employed as pilots, aircraft engineers and cabin crews in various airlines in the emirates, there’s a need to strengthen Fiji’s capabilities in other areas.

’’We’re looking at the hotel industry, they have a very large hospitality industry, tourism is big and we’re talking to hotels. And since we’ve been there we’ve been able to talk to them and they’ve been recruiting to we have people coming in to be employed in hotels like Retana, Jimuri and so on…the other area is on nurses they’ve been there for 10 to 15 years in some big hospitals and they’re very well regarded’’.

Nair adds that despite the big demand for nurses, Fijian nurses are required to sit for a special exam in these Arab countries before getting the job.

However, they’re having talks to have the exam conducted in Fiji.

‘’We want our Fijians to go but they need to sit these specific exam. Each emirate like Dubai and Abu Dhabi have got their own exams so we’ve been trying to see if we can get that exam to be set in Fiji. We want them to make that exam available in Fiji and in recent discussions we’ve been trying that for a while now but there’s progress that they’re considering having those exams available here so our nurses can sit for it and wait for vacancies to open up in UAE they can apply for it’’.

Apart from these, they’re also tapping into the teaching field and niche areas where they want to see an increase in the numbers of Fijians in this region.