More than 360 teachers have left Fiji between January and May this year, with an average of 40 teachers migrating every month, this was higlighted by the Fijian Teachers Association General Secretary during an interview with Fiji One News.

The association highlighted that the growing number of teachers leaving the country is creating vacancies that local teacher training institutions are struggling to fill.

FTA General Secretary Paula Manumanunitoga said the union is now working with the Ministry of Education to develop strategies to ensure enough teachers are available to replace those who leave.

“Our teacher training institutions, universities, they’re not producing enough. We’re happy that the Minister for Education has now taken this seriously and he’s called us into meetings to strategize what we should do”.

“Effectively, we cannot stop teachers going, but we have to have enough replacements on standby to fill in those gaps” Manumanunitoga highlighted.

Manumanunitoga said low salaries continue to be the biggest reason teachers are seeking employment overseas.
He added that unless teachers receive better pay, more will continue leaving Fiji to provide a better future for themselves and their families.

“One of the main reasons why teachers are leaving this country is because of the poor pay. We’ve been asking, begging… please give teachers a pay raise so we can at least help put a plug on the existing of teachers”.

“But they don’t seem to be listening. We’re saying that we want a 30 percent pay raise, but then they give us three percent, they give us four percent and that’s not enough” he said.