FHTA 7 March 2022 – The Fiji Hotel and Tourism Association (FHTA) began its series of two-day COVID Safe Upskilling sessions in Suva on Monday 7th March for staff of tourism industry businesses.
This training provides the skills and knowledge to implement and comply with COVID- safe business protocols, providing our visitors with added layers of safety during their holidays.
This is in collaboration with the Australia Pacific Training Coalition (APTC) and supported by the International Labour Organisation, with practical application training from the Ministry of Health & Medical Services (MOHMS) and CDC teams.
Director for the International Labour Organisation for the Pacific Island Countries Mr Matin Karimli opened the training and acknowledged Fiji’s focused efforts and FHTA’s continued industry support in ensuring that our borders opened safely.
“This means income for our hotels, taxi drivers, tour operators, handicraft sellers and many more enterprises linked to the extensive tourism value chain. Therefore, we must do everything in our effort, to ensure that our borders continue to stay open safely and contributes to decent work, economic recovery and economic growth” he said.
FHTA Chief Executive Officer Fantasha Lockington stressed the need to continually support the industry to practice COVID safe protocols as part of normal operations which in turn would allow more businesses to reopen, employ more Fijians, contributing as a result to Fiji’s economic recovery.
Head of Health Protection Dr Alisha Sahukhan, with the members of the CDC and MOHMS teams were on hand to provide the critical hands-on training for testing, compliance and updates for the on-line Tamanu e-reporting database used by MOHMS for COVID19 that is being expanded for private labs and hotels for test reporting.
Additionally, APTC supported FHTA’s identification of tourism staff requiring enhanced training in managing difficult situations and practicing safety protocols in food and service areas, providing participants with micro-credentials that can be built on progressively.
Tourism properties in the central division turned out in numbers for the training, information-sharing and access to toolkits that equips each participant to on-train other staff at their businesses.
This training will be conducted in the Western Division later this week and if demand warrants, in the Northern Division as well.
