In a significant step for the future of Fiji’s depressed tourism industry, the Australian Federal Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade early this evening announced that is had lowered its Travel Advisory to Fiji from ”high degree of caution” to “exercise caution”.
This is the next to lowest level of advisory and has come about, as anticipated in TravelMole as a result of last week’s lifting of the public emergency regulations in the country, in place since the Dec coup, but removed due to threats from the EEC related to funding.
TravelMole today (Tues) covered stories from Fiji related to the overly high level of advisories and the impact they were having, but the Interim Prime Minister was reluctant to lower the public emergency regulations as when that occurred civil servants who had been subject to a 5% pay cut after the coup, would return to their normal pay levels and could also demand higher pay and possibly go on strike, which they could not under the public emergency regulations.
It is anticipated that tourism to Fiji will now recover much more speedily as a result of this long awaited action.
Report by The Mole
