Tararua farmers get help from Taskforce Green

The six Taskforce Green workers with manager Mike Brock in town for training.

A six-person team of job seekers has been out helping clean up the devastating effects of Cyclone Gabrielle in Tararua District.

The local people have been employed for eight weeks through the Government’s Enhanced Taskforce Green (ETFG) work programme, which is funded through the Ministry of Social Development (MSD).

The ETFG programme sees MSD work with local organisations and communities that have been damaged by emergency events to employ job seekers to support the clean-up.

These workers were job seekers who could be receiving a benefit, or they could be students, or workers displaced from their jobs because of the emergency event – such as farm or factory workers.

Simone Pringle, MSD’s acting central regional commissioner, says most of the work in Tararua District involves cleaning up and replacing damaged fencing.

Land Based Training is contracted as the employer and works in partnership with the Rural Support Trust, which coordinates the work requests from farmers and property owners in the Tararua area.

The programme has been running six weeks already and of the 27 requests for help from farmers to date the team has already completed work on eight farms.

Clearing fence lines of debris.

Manager of the team, Mike Brock, says they have been working progressively southeast from Weber to Wimbledon to Herbertville and then onto Coast Rd, River Rd and Route 52.

Replacing fence lines on Coast Rd, Pongaroa.

He says he has a great team of hardworking guys and thanks to pretty good weather out on the coast they have made good progress and developed good fencing skills.

Part of the programme involves skills training and at the end of the programme the guys should come away with qualifications which will help them into a permanent job. One of them is already considering setting up his own fencing operation.

Talking with the six guys, they have enjoyed the work, gaining satisfaction from a good job well done out in the open air and the camaraderie of working together.

“We have received some great feedback and acknowledgement from the property owners about the work being done,” Simone says.

Dave Murdoch is a part-time photo-journalist working for the Bush Telegraph and based at Dannevirke. He has covered any community story telling good news about the district for the last ten years.