PACIFIC ISLANDS REPORT

Pacific Islands Development Program/East-West Center
With Support From Center for Pacific Islands Studies/University of Hawai‘i

By Samisoni Pareti

SUVA, Fiji (Islands Business, April 2005) – Taking a job in the oil rich nation of Kuwait can be as shifting as the desert sand that covers the Middle Eastern country.

It is unpredictable, even a risky thing to do if one is not careful.

Just ask the group of about 200 Fijian men stranded and jobless in a house in Kuwait City.

Or the 20,000 in Fiji who have paid a job registration fee of a minimum of $150 each and now wait longingly for the call to work in Kuwait.

Whether such a call will come could be a $3 million question. That is the sum a Fiji-registered recruiting Meridian Services Agency would have amassed if it collected fees from all the recruits it registered.

Some recruits, Fiji Islands Business was told, were asked to pay fees of up to $250 to $300.

Many of these were recruited from villages in Vanua Levu, Lomaiviti and throughout the country.

The activities of Meridian's boss, Timoci Lolohea, are being investigated by the police, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Moses Driver had confirmed.

He told Fiji Islands Business that police inquiries would carry on from previous investigations on the company in progress until last November.

At that time, questions were being asked about the details and results of Lolohea's recruitment drive.

Driver refused to confirm it, but other sources told Fiji Islands Business that a government department was assisting police inquiries and a report was expected to be received by Commissioner Andrew Hughes in April.

Inquiries by Fiji Islands Business produced an interesting but not a full picture of Meridian's activities. Fiji Islands Business was not able to contact Lolohea since he left Fiji early in March on what local media reports said was a trip to the Public Warehouse Company (PWC) Logistics headquarters in Kuwait.

However, a Fiji government delegation in New York for a United Nations conference reported seeing Lolohea there. He is believed to have travelled to the Middle East afterwards. He had not returned to Fiji by the time Fiji Islands Business went to print.

Attempts to obtain information from PWC Logistics in Kuwait City failed. Numerous telephone, emails and facsimile messages (see pages 6 and 7) sent to both Nasser Obaid, PWC Logistics' director of human resources, and Tarek Sultan Al-Essa, the company's chairman and managing director, were not answered.

The silence from the company about its association with the recruitment of Fijian workers is deafening given that it is listed in the Kuwait Stock Exchange and does business with companies with household names.

Two months after Meridian sent over 400 men to Kuwait, the word trickling in now suggests that some are not faring well. They are being supported somewhat by a decision by the Fiji Government to send its labour minister Kenneth Zinck to Kuwait on a fact-finding mission.

When contacted in London late last month after being in Kuwait, Zinck refused to divulge his findings until after he had met Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase.

However, a senior government official told Fiji Islands Business that Minister Zinck was disturbed by what he saw.

Contrary to assurances from Lolohea and PWC, more than 200 Fijian men were still without jobs and were housed in a residential home. All their passports had been taken by PWC. A few had ventured out to look for work.

According to one government source, several recruits had told Zinck they wanted to return home.

The overseas recruitment policy the minister asked cabinet to approve in February empowers the labour ministry to revoke recruitment licences issued by it. This is one option Zinck may consider on his return.

One of Lolohea's managers at his Suva office was defensive about the matter when contacted by Fiji Islands Business.

He did not deny that some recruits in Kuwait were without jobs but said they lacked skills and that PWC was spending a lot of money training them.

He said their job contracts clearly stated that on arrival in Kuwait, each would be on 100 days probation during which their skill levels would be assessed. These men knew what they were getting into, the local Meridian manager said.

Fiji Islands Business inquiries revealed that Meridian Services is branching into other businesses in Fiji so as to employ men recruited by it.

One of Meridian's managers is Akuila Tabualevu, whose job title is new business manager.

His task is to identify businesses Meridian Services could venture into such as trucking, logging and construction.

One government chief executive officer wonders whether Meridian has been able to secure a construction licence.

Meridian's registered memorandum of association allows it to engage in 54 kinds of business ranging from real estate, to wholesale importing, exporting, timber processing and lending money.

Fiji Islands Business has learnt of a request for a contract from the Ministry of Women, Social Welfare and Poverty Alleviation to build 200 houses at $5000 each under a scheme for assistance for people unable to afford the cost of doing so.

Fiji Islands Business was told that a lump sum usually goes to a non-profit organisation to build several cheap houses in a community.

"Five thousand dollars is not enough to build a home but the idea really is for a government and non-governmental organisation partnership in assisting the poor," an official of the ministry explained.

Can a private profit making company like Meridian obtain such a contract?

The Minister for Women, Asenaca Caucau told Fiji Islands Business: "Meridian is never involved in the negotiations. Meridian is a private company and we don't give contracts to private companies. We have been talking to a religious NGO called Support Ministry to see whether they can help build homes for the poor."

But who is Support Ministry? According to a number of officials at the Ministry of Women, it is an organisation that appears to be connected with Meridian.

"When Support Ministry executives come to meetings with the Minister, it is usually Lolohea and one Jone Melekini who turn up," one official said. Melekini is one of Lolohea's employees.

Minister Caucau told Fiji Islands Business that Lolohea did not have an influential role in the affairs of Support Ministry. While Lolohea was a member of the Support Ministry, he did not run the show, she said.

Officials of her ministry said they were aware of discussions for a $100,000 contract and discussions for an allocation of $30,000 to the "poor" to assist them apply to Meridian Services for jobs in Kuwait.

The planned allocation was vetoed by the Prime Minister's office, Fiji Islands Business was told. Officers there as well as those in the Ministry of Women confirmed this.

Minister Caucau told Fiji Islands Business there had been no such allocation. She had used her own money and in her own personal capacity to assist people who sought her help to apply to Meridian for a job. She said her ministry had no vote to assist people who seek jobs in Kuwait.

One senior Fiji diplomat told Fiji Islands Business he had been disturbed by being asked for advice by men from his village who wanted to know whether they should pay the $250 fee they said Meridian had ask for. Forty men from his district had already paid their fees and had been waiting since January for the call to go to Kuwait.

The diplomat, who asked not to be identified, said he had been in touch with the police about the matter.

Fiji Islands Business inquiries show that Meridian has been active as a recruiter in villages and settlements in Viti Levu, Vanua Levu and the outer islands.

At one stage, some complained that men of Viseisei-home of President Ratu Josefa Iloilo-were getting first preference for jobs in the Middle East.

Recruitment drives have touched on networks of the Methodist Church to the extent of job quotas for specific church circuits.

On farmlands in Baulevu, beside the Rewa River, groups of men wait and hope they will be included in the 150 quota given to the Kasavu Methodist Church.

In Raiwaqa in Suva, and Nadera, the Methodist Church has offered to use church funds to pay for application fees for followers hoping for a job in Kuwait if they agree to repay the money for members who want to apply for work in Kuwait if they agree to repay the money.

In Dreketi tikina in Macuata, a village used its development fund to pay for application fees. Similar stories have been heard from Koro Island and other villages around the country.

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