Fiji Pine Group reinstated their employees full Fiji National Provident Fund contribution.

Group chief executive officer Vimlesh Kumar said they had been planning to do this since last year and are grateful to their employees for their patience and dedication.

“Pine Group always has its workers at heart and has been planning since last year to restore the employee contribution FNPF back to 10 per cent (an increase of five per cent).

“At Pine Group, we set the strategic vision and goals which are communicated first-hand to our workers. Our workers capture these strategies and deliver on them.

“In other words, we work together as one team and tackle issues as they come or to deliver on the set strategies.

“Being in the Forestry sector, Pine group has its unique set of challenges.

It is a unique business where every single step needs to be carefully assessed and before taken.

“COVID-19 brought about further challenges to the Pine Group however, with our strong team of workers, we managed to sail through these obstacles and continue to tackle every challenge as they came.

Through the concerted efforts of all our workers, we have managed to achieve this goal which came into effect at the beginning of this month.

Fiji Pine Group received significant damages from Tropical Cyclone Ana.

“TC Ana brought about a significant impact to our operations. Not so much to the pine plantations but:
– Damages to our road network.
– Affecting our logging operations. Our Wairiki factory has been down since last week since we are unable to extract logs.
-Impacted our replanting operations as we are unable to access the replanting areas.

They are now awaiting ground to dry up before they start rebuilding.

Mr Kumar said: “We will once again be back in operations soon – in a week at the most if weather holds.”

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