The 13 staff who were employed at the Home and Living branch that was destroyed in a fire in Sigatoka Town will be redeployed to other responsibilities including the Vinod Patel hardware department store and will not face any job loss.

This has been confirmed by Home and Living General Manager Sanjeev Mudaliar.

Mudaliar says that though the fire is something that is beyond their control, Home and Living will continue to look after its employees and will regroup to have another Home and Living Branch re-built in Sigatoka for their customers.

The fire in Sigatoka Town destroyed Meenoos, Home and Living and Ravendra’s Supermarket and Restaurant, and caused damages to Max Value Supermarket and Courts.

Meenoos says that they have yet to assess and estimate the cost of the damage to their Sigatoka Branch adding that this will affect sales for Fiji Day, Diwali and Christmas in Sigatoka.

However they hope to get an estimation of the cost of the damage and hope to put up a temporary shop soon to cater for the demand of their customers in Sigatoka and to help keep their 7 employees’ jobs adding that for the time being their employees have been deployed to their Nadi Branch.

Max Value Director Retail and Marketing Kunaseelan Sabaratnam has confirmed that firefighters had to break a window to get into the shop to stop the fire from spreading to Courts and in the process the store sustained water damage.

He adds that once the power is restored Max Value in Sigatoka will be back in full operation.

Courts Fiji Limited has issued a statement following the fire stating the branch was insured for material damage.

The building is owned by an external landlord and the 14 employees will be reassigned to other operations of the Company until Sigatoka Branch operations recommence.

The first team of firefighters to respond to the major fire in Sigatoka Town arrived at the scene one hour after the fire started.

However National Fire Authority Chief Fire Officer, Qionilau Moceitai maintains that firefighters tried to respond as quickly as possible to the fire in Sigatoka Town.

Moceitai says that the Sigatoka Fire Station firefighters were attending to a fire call at Natadola Beach Resort when the call came in regarding the fire in Sigatoka Town.