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Thorough review vital for minimum wage rate adjustments: AG

August 11, 2018 5:08 am

A thorough review is needed in order to make adjustments to the current minimum wage rate.

Economy Minister Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum clarified this while replying to a question raised by a tertiary student during a budget roadshow at the University of Fiji in Lautoka yesterday.

Sayed-Khaiyum says there are many factors which needs to be considered before raising the minimum wage rate.

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“So what we are saying is that, we are not saying it cannot be increase but we have to make sure that we do it in such a manner it does not have an inflationary impact.”

Sayed-Khaiyum also took a swipe at some politicians lying to Fijians about avenues of increasing the minimum wage rate in the country.

The current minimum wage rate stands at $2.68 an hour and the Minister says it’s important to look at the social impacts of increasing the rate.

“If you don’t control it you will lose jobs, you look at Australia now because the cost of things have gone up so significantly they lost many of their jobs to the Asian countries.”

Sayed-Khaiyum says increasing the minimum wage rate will be costly to the self-employed and the current rate will be reviewed by the end of this year.