* And former PONGA professors turned politicians who were on over $250,000 salaries, not to mention the political donations made by big business houses to all parties.
* Oh, also we mustn't forget the FFP Ministers and the Prime Minister
on fat cat salaries and huge daily travel allowances.
* And the trade unionists who ran and joined the FNFP Board after the 2006 coup; disappeared with sitting allowances running into thousands of dollars each. One has become a new darling of PAP, the other must be hovering in the shadows for election ticker ticket
* It is equally shocking how Opposition leaders, like a 'band of thieves, have ganged up together in their sole pursuit to bring down FPP, and share political power with the very thieves who sunk Fiji into poverty in 1987, 2000, and 2006
Get ready to see Ponga Professor and Duna Coupist in Coalition Embrace, perpetuating the fraud that they tried to pull on us in 1999. Maybe, this time around, Sitiveni Rabuka will once again be presented by the NFP as the 'Man of the Millenial' in 2022/23?
* In the May 1999 election, our good friend and NFP's economic expert and political candidate Dr Wadan Narsey, touted as a possible Finance Minister in an SVT-NFP coalition government, presented the party's coalition partner and SVT leader Sitiveni Rabuka at an election campaign in Toorak, Suva, as the leader for 'The Coming Millenium'.
* As the Fiji Times columnist and veteran politician, the late Sir Vijay Singh saw it - 'For many, that was quite a lot to swallow, especially considering the unorthodox way in which Mr Rabuka had introduced himself to us in 1987'.
*In the Suva City Indian Communal seat, Narsey lost on first preference to FLP. The SVT-NFP was routed at the polls, followed by Speight's coup, driving the very poor of all races into poverty, with the People's Coalition government claiming that big business houses were behind the 2000 George Speight coup.
* Ironically, the Speight Coup made Mahendra Chaudhry a double-digit millionaire. He got $2million from the Indian government to allegedly re-locate to Australia with his family. In 2014, he was convicted for foreign exchange currency violations
Chaudhry’s Australian lawyer had asked Justice Madigan to impose no conviction recording as his client had plans to contest then forthcoming 2014 September general election; said Chaudhry's house was valued at $300,000 and his only other property was his vehicle. And Chaudhry was suffering from diabetes, heart diseases and cardiac conditions.
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In the last few weeks and totally out of the blue, the Minister for Economy, Aiyaz Sayed- Khaiyum, has remembered that the Government had promised in 2018 to review the minimum wages every two years.
So for the second time now, an Australian Associate Professor of Economics at Western Sydney University (Dr. Partha Gangopadhyay) arrived in Fiji to deliver a new national minimum wage for Fiji (more on Dr Partha’s credentials below).
From his presentations around the country, it seems that Dr Partha is proposing an increase of the national minimum wage from the current $2.68 per hour to between $3.45 and $3.65 per hour.
But he noted that the “changes would require a collective decision by the major players involved”.
So, what if the employers yet again refuse to accept the new minimum wages? Dr Partha gave everybody a way out, stating “if a consensus is not reached about the national minimum wage it’s nothing specific to Fiji. It’s more globally related”.
So Fiji’s workers will be back to square one, as they have been for 30 years. Dr Partha had concluded “I propose for a review every year…as per the inflation rate.
This is to ensure the real value of the national minimum wage is unchanged [but] it could be more acceptable to have it reviewed every two years”.
All workers would be asking: more acceptable to whom? But more importantly, they should be asking other serious questions:
First, minimum wages, even for unskilled workers take no account of the harsh reality that there are certain industries or sectors in Fiji whose employers simply do not have the ability to pay even $3.45 per hour.
Second, there are industries and employers in Fiji who are doing extremely well (even in this COVID period).
These industries could afford to pay even $3.45 per hour, but will happily pay the lower minimum wage set by Government.
I suggest that any National Minimum Wage is just another game that Fiji’s employers are happy to play along with. This delays increasing wages as long as they can, and by as little as they can get away with. As the public and Opposition parties ask, is this just an elections gimmick by a government which has ignored declining real wages and increasing poverty for more than a decade?
So for the second time now, an Australian Associate Professor of Economics at Western Sydney University (Dr. Partha Gangopadhyay) arrived in Fiji to deliver a new national minimum wage for Fiji (more on Dr Partha’s credentials below).
From his presentations around the country, it seems that Dr Partha is proposing an increase of the national minimum wage from the current $2.68 per hour to between $3.45 and $3.65 per hour.
But he noted that the “changes would require a collective decision by the major players involved”.
So, what if the employers yet again refuse to accept the new minimum wages? Dr Partha gave everybody a way out, stating “if a consensus is not reached about the national minimum wage it’s nothing specific to Fiji. It’s more globally related”.
So Fiji’s workers will be back to square one, as they have been for 30 years. Dr Partha had concluded “I propose for a review every year…as per the inflation rate.
This is to ensure the real value of the national minimum wage is unchanged [but] it could be more acceptable to have it reviewed every two years”.
All workers would be asking: more acceptable to whom? But more importantly, they should be asking other serious questions:
- will this new minimum wage actually work? (I suggest, no);
- did the last minimum wage set by Dr Partha actually work? (no evidence has ever been offered);
- why should workers depend for their living standards on ad hoc determinations of “minimum wages” which can never be made to work?; and
- why were the far more effective 10 Wages Councils, industry by industry, abandoned by the Bainimarama Government in 2011?
First, minimum wages, even for unskilled workers take no account of the harsh reality that there are certain industries or sectors in Fiji whose employers simply do not have the ability to pay even $3.45 per hour.
Second, there are industries and employers in Fiji who are doing extremely well (even in this COVID period).
These industries could afford to pay even $3.45 per hour, but will happily pay the lower minimum wage set by Government.
I suggest that any National Minimum Wage is just another game that Fiji’s employers are happy to play along with. This delays increasing wages as long as they can, and by as little as they can get away with. As the public and Opposition parties ask, is this just an elections gimmick by a government which has ignored declining real wages and increasing poverty for more than a decade?
Dr Partha’s credentials
For the Economy Minister to hire a foreign academic might suggest that he is some kind of expert in the field of labour markets and wage determination. But is he?
Dr Partha’s biography on the University of Western Sydney website says that he is an Associate Professor (one rank lower down from Professor) of Economics, Finance and Property.
On his webpage Dr Partha claims “In my capacity as a professional economist, I have created the current labour market architecture in Fiji”. Wow. Any labour economist would be surprised to hear that declaring one minimum wage for all of Fiji, once, is creating “labour market architecture”.
The public can ask: did Dr Partha do a thorough study of wage rates in Fiji industry by industry?
Has Dr Partha looked at any audited accounts of employers who allege they cannot pay the suggested minimum wages?
Has Dr Partha produced any reports of wages paid before and after his determination of the minimum wage last time? I would be pleasantly surprised if he has and have written to ask him.
Far more effective Wages Councils
So the media needs to ask Dr Partha if he bothered to read the first real study of the “labour market architecture” and wage determination in Fiji (by a mere local Professor, Wadan Narsey) before he began his minimum wages exercise?
I remind the Fiji public of the 2005 ECREA-financed 2005 study (Just Wages in Fiji: lifting workers out of poverty) which was launched with glowing words by the then Vice President of Fiji (the late Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi).
You can find it on Youtube. That study pointed out, with solid data and reading of all the records of meetings in the Ministry of Labour for 30 years, how workers’ wages had lagged behind the cost of living because employers kept alleging, without any proof, that they could not pay the wage increase according to the rate of inflation.
The ECREA study recommended that there be separate Wages Councils for different industries, but with one Chairman, empowered to set different minimum wages (Wages Regulation Orders or WROs) depending on the conditions within the industry.
The Councils would also be empowered to set differential rates within industries depending on the size of the employers, with small employers being allowed lower minimum wages.
Above all, there was a real protection for employers who were genuinely not able to pay the wage increase stipulated by the WROs.
All they had to do was to show their audited accounts to the Independent Chairman of the Wages Councils or the Minister of Labour, who had to keep the information confi dential.
The ECREA study was accepted and implemented by the Ministry of Labor during the Qarase Government. It was also initially accepted by the military Bainimarama Government when it took over in 2006.
It resulted in the far more effective 10 Wages Councils, industry by industry, under the passionate chairmanship of the late Father Kevin Barr.
But they were so effective that the employers successfully lobbied for them to be stifled and not implemented, year after year.
And in 2011, they were eventually abolished and replaced by one minimum wage.
The killing of the 10 wages councils
Fiji will remember that the late Father Barr sadly related on Fiji TV that he had not even been consulted on the decision. He publicly lashed out at Bainimarama’s “crony capitalism”.
He was then abused over the phone by a very powerful person and informed that his Fiji resident visa was not going to be renewed and that he had better start packing.
Father Barr said that not a single employer who claimed “inability to pay” ever showed their accounts to him or even the Minister of Labour.
The Bainimarama Government quickly gave in to the pressure from employers who just kept asserting that “times were hard”, as they had done for the previous 30 years.
So when the Bainimarama Government’s own Minister with a PhD in Economics (Dr Mahendra Reddy) in 2013 allegedly “scientifically” set the Minimum Wages at $2.32 per hour, even that low level was opposed by employers and not implemented.
Eventually in 2014 another Minister set the minimum wages at an even lower $2.00 per hour, with totally unknown impact.
Dr Partha’s first go
The Fiji public should remember Dr Partha’s statements on his first minimum wages exercise after “consultations” around the country.
He had at that time said that lowest paid workers were “not affected by food prices”, arguing that having looked at the “actual consumption baskets” (i.e. what people are actually consuming), he concluded that “many food prices remain unchanged” because they are price-controlled.
Even the Fiji Bureau of Statistics experts on household income and expenditure could have told Dr. Partha very differently.
But Dr. Gangopadhyay pronounced “That is why I am not giving them the full benefit of the cost of living” but “only giving them 50 per cent (or 2.6 percent)”.
The intelligent public can well ask: what is the science behind awarding only 50 per cent of the increase in cost of living? Or is it simply a cosmetic compromise?
Was that not yet again reducing the workers’ real wages because the increase was half that of the cost of living?
Indeed, one progressive employer (Kelly Hart) said that her company was already paying $3.70 an hour and even willing to work towards a $4 an hour rate, but her board had instructed her to hold off because “the Government has said we don’t have to.
This is where Government is holding things back” (The Fiji Times 1 June 2019).
Ms. Hart sensibly advised that all the parties need to “be locked in a room until they reach an agreement that is sustainable for business and effective for workers”.
Which was precisely the mechanism at the heart of the 10 Wages Councils which operated under one Chairman supported by technical staff and statistical data.
But that sensible mechanism was abolished by the Bainimarama Government in 2011.
Reinventing a square wheel
There has never been any report backed solidly by industry wide wages data, by either Dr Partha or Government, on how successful (or unsuccessful) his first minimum wage-setting has been.
So once more in 2022, and again after a series of “consultations” around the country and “expertly” observing “the increased rural poverty” and the global effects of COVID, Dr Partha is planning to set a new National Minimum Wage of between $3.45 to $3.65 per hour.
Employers will be so happy that Dr Partha has announced that even this minimum wage will be by “consensus between all the parties”. Ha ha ha.
The employers are the only party that really matters. They are already digging their heels in knowing that there is no systematic mechanism to enforce whatever minimum wage Dr Partha recommends (on whatever basis).
They also know that they can hold out for another review in two years’ time.
But unions, workers and voters at the next elections can ask the Opposition parties if they have any plans to revive the 10 (or more as was once recommended) systematic Wages Councils.
These can operate to regularly adjust workers’ minimum wages, industry by industry, employer by employer, based on the capacity of employers to pay as shown by their audited accounts, so that the wages of the poorest workers can keep up with the cost of living (CPI).
But oh dear, then there would be no need for any intervention by any strutting Minister of Economy who can pretend to throw elections carrots at gullible voters.
Or perhaps they are not so gullible.
WADAN NARSEY is a leading Fiji economist and commentator on political and economic affairs. The views expressed in this article are not necessarily those of The Fiji Times.
Fijileaks: Dr Partha Gangopadhyartha Gangopadhy below is yet to respond to our questions
For the Economy Minister to hire a foreign academic might suggest that he is some kind of expert in the field of labour markets and wage determination. But is he?
Dr Partha’s biography on the University of Western Sydney website says that he is an Associate Professor (one rank lower down from Professor) of Economics, Finance and Property.
On his webpage Dr Partha claims “In my capacity as a professional economist, I have created the current labour market architecture in Fiji”. Wow. Any labour economist would be surprised to hear that declaring one minimum wage for all of Fiji, once, is creating “labour market architecture”.
The public can ask: did Dr Partha do a thorough study of wage rates in Fiji industry by industry?
Has Dr Partha looked at any audited accounts of employers who allege they cannot pay the suggested minimum wages?
Has Dr Partha produced any reports of wages paid before and after his determination of the minimum wage last time? I would be pleasantly surprised if he has and have written to ask him.
Far more effective Wages Councils
So the media needs to ask Dr Partha if he bothered to read the first real study of the “labour market architecture” and wage determination in Fiji (by a mere local Professor, Wadan Narsey) before he began his minimum wages exercise?
I remind the Fiji public of the 2005 ECREA-financed 2005 study (Just Wages in Fiji: lifting workers out of poverty) which was launched with glowing words by the then Vice President of Fiji (the late Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi).
You can find it on Youtube. That study pointed out, with solid data and reading of all the records of meetings in the Ministry of Labour for 30 years, how workers’ wages had lagged behind the cost of living because employers kept alleging, without any proof, that they could not pay the wage increase according to the rate of inflation.
The ECREA study recommended that there be separate Wages Councils for different industries, but with one Chairman, empowered to set different minimum wages (Wages Regulation Orders or WROs) depending on the conditions within the industry.
The Councils would also be empowered to set differential rates within industries depending on the size of the employers, with small employers being allowed lower minimum wages.
Above all, there was a real protection for employers who were genuinely not able to pay the wage increase stipulated by the WROs.
All they had to do was to show their audited accounts to the Independent Chairman of the Wages Councils or the Minister of Labour, who had to keep the information confi dential.
The ECREA study was accepted and implemented by the Ministry of Labor during the Qarase Government. It was also initially accepted by the military Bainimarama Government when it took over in 2006.
It resulted in the far more effective 10 Wages Councils, industry by industry, under the passionate chairmanship of the late Father Kevin Barr.
But they were so effective that the employers successfully lobbied for them to be stifled and not implemented, year after year.
And in 2011, they were eventually abolished and replaced by one minimum wage.
The killing of the 10 wages councils
Fiji will remember that the late Father Barr sadly related on Fiji TV that he had not even been consulted on the decision. He publicly lashed out at Bainimarama’s “crony capitalism”.
He was then abused over the phone by a very powerful person and informed that his Fiji resident visa was not going to be renewed and that he had better start packing.
Father Barr said that not a single employer who claimed “inability to pay” ever showed their accounts to him or even the Minister of Labour.
The Bainimarama Government quickly gave in to the pressure from employers who just kept asserting that “times were hard”, as they had done for the previous 30 years.
So when the Bainimarama Government’s own Minister with a PhD in Economics (Dr Mahendra Reddy) in 2013 allegedly “scientifically” set the Minimum Wages at $2.32 per hour, even that low level was opposed by employers and not implemented.
Eventually in 2014 another Minister set the minimum wages at an even lower $2.00 per hour, with totally unknown impact.
Dr Partha’s first go
The Fiji public should remember Dr Partha’s statements on his first minimum wages exercise after “consultations” around the country.
He had at that time said that lowest paid workers were “not affected by food prices”, arguing that having looked at the “actual consumption baskets” (i.e. what people are actually consuming), he concluded that “many food prices remain unchanged” because they are price-controlled.
Even the Fiji Bureau of Statistics experts on household income and expenditure could have told Dr. Partha very differently.
But Dr. Gangopadhyay pronounced “That is why I am not giving them the full benefit of the cost of living” but “only giving them 50 per cent (or 2.6 percent)”.
The intelligent public can well ask: what is the science behind awarding only 50 per cent of the increase in cost of living? Or is it simply a cosmetic compromise?
Was that not yet again reducing the workers’ real wages because the increase was half that of the cost of living?
Indeed, one progressive employer (Kelly Hart) said that her company was already paying $3.70 an hour and even willing to work towards a $4 an hour rate, but her board had instructed her to hold off because “the Government has said we don’t have to.
This is where Government is holding things back” (The Fiji Times 1 June 2019).
Ms. Hart sensibly advised that all the parties need to “be locked in a room until they reach an agreement that is sustainable for business and effective for workers”.
Which was precisely the mechanism at the heart of the 10 Wages Councils which operated under one Chairman supported by technical staff and statistical data.
But that sensible mechanism was abolished by the Bainimarama Government in 2011.
Reinventing a square wheel
There has never been any report backed solidly by industry wide wages data, by either Dr Partha or Government, on how successful (or unsuccessful) his first minimum wage-setting has been.
So once more in 2022, and again after a series of “consultations” around the country and “expertly” observing “the increased rural poverty” and the global effects of COVID, Dr Partha is planning to set a new National Minimum Wage of between $3.45 to $3.65 per hour.
Employers will be so happy that Dr Partha has announced that even this minimum wage will be by “consensus between all the parties”. Ha ha ha.
The employers are the only party that really matters. They are already digging their heels in knowing that there is no systematic mechanism to enforce whatever minimum wage Dr Partha recommends (on whatever basis).
They also know that they can hold out for another review in two years’ time.
But unions, workers and voters at the next elections can ask the Opposition parties if they have any plans to revive the 10 (or more as was once recommended) systematic Wages Councils.
These can operate to regularly adjust workers’ minimum wages, industry by industry, employer by employer, based on the capacity of employers to pay as shown by their audited accounts, so that the wages of the poorest workers can keep up with the cost of living (CPI).
But oh dear, then there would be no need for any intervention by any strutting Minister of Economy who can pretend to throw elections carrots at gullible voters.
Or perhaps they are not so gullible.
WADAN NARSEY is a leading Fiji economist and commentator on political and economic affairs. The views expressed in this article are not necessarily those of The Fiji Times.
Fijileaks: Dr Partha Gangopadhyartha Gangopadhy below is yet to respond to our questions
