Fiji youth unemployment rising amid Covid-19 pandemic: UN-ADB report
The youth unemployment rate in Fiji is set to rise amid the Covid-19 pandemic, warns a joint report by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
Workers lay the floor for a new disaster shelter on Koro island Photo: Supplied/Fiji Red Cross
But the two agencies found that young Fijians were already jobless prior to the pandemic at a high 18 percent.
The report Tackling the Covid-19 youth employment crisis in Asia and Pacific revealed the Fiji youth rate was already seven times more than their adults.
The report, released recently, revealed this rate would be at about 37 percent by the end of the year.
It also showed the rate of young women not in employment, education or training stood at 29.6 percent.
It said with Covid-19, the task of addressing the youth unemployment crisis would not be easy.
Covid-19 a triple blow to youth: ILO
The ILO's Pacific director Matin Karimli said the ILO Covid-19 Monitor had presented alarming findings.
He said the pandemic added a triple blow to youth.
The ILO's Matin Karimli Photo: twitter / @MatinKarimli
Karimli said this would destroy current employment of young people, disrupting education and training of young people.
He said the report also placed "major obstacles in the way of young people seeking to enter the labour market or to move between jobs".
Matin Karimli said as revealed by the government with 115,000 workers out of job or on reduced hours in Fiji, Karimli was certain there was a large percentage of them that were youth.
"This means that as national unemployment rises, unfortunate and more unfortunately compared to adult rate, the youth unemployment rate will increase," Matin Karimli said.
Karimli said the ILO would be very interested to see how young people's priority areas could be integrated between the Ministry of Employment, Productivity and Industrial Relations and the Ministry of Youth and Sports.
He said particularly when the Fiji National Employment Policyfor 2018-22 had targeted addressing the high youth unemployment rate in the country.
Ministry of Youth and Sports in Fiji. Photo: Alex Perrottet/RNZ
