About twelve hundred jobs, in specialised fields, will be available for the Fijian workforce, in the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu under the Skills Movement Scheme.

A Memorandum of Understanding on the Scheme was finalised in March this year and the initiative is strongly supported by the Fijian Government.

In order to implement the scheme the Ministry of Industry and Trade held a workshop yesterday to discuss the necessary processes.

MSG member countries had six months to come up with processes and systems to implement the scheme and that period has lapsed.

Under the scheme, trained Fijians will be given the option to work in any of the countries in the MSG region.

Industry and Trade Permanent Secretary Shaheen Ali says immigration issues, qualification and lack of proper accreditations has prevented skilled labours to move from one country to another.

However since Fiji took over the chairmanship of the MSG this has changed.

Ali says this will not only fix labour shortage problems but also generate economic activity.