NZ framing seasonal work visas for Pacific, Fiji says

Fiji's Foreign Affairs Minister Kaliopate Tavola says he's still waiting on a New Zealand response to the bid for a seasonal work scheme for Pacific Islanders.

"I think New Zealand officials are putting together an agreement that would ensure people return," Mr Tavola told the Fiji Times.

Such a clause in contracts would mean people going to New Zealand for work such as picking fruit, pruning and tying grapevines would know when to return home, he said.

Mr Tavola said previous seasonal work schemes had been scrapped by countries like Australia and New Zealand because of constant abuse by guest workers.

New Zealand has announced no policy decision on labour mobility, but its Foreign Minister, Winston Peters, said last Thursday that officials were looking at the "urgent" issue.

Workers from countries such as Fiji, Samoa or Vanuatu would be able to work for three or four months in New Zealand so long as a system could be found to make sure they went home, he told reporters in Vanuatu.

New Zealand believed that seasonal workers would obey if their own community leaders told them to return home at the expiry of a visa: "We're looking at a different approach, at the village level, where people do have authority over their young people," he said.

Mr Tavola said while New Zealand officials were studying the proposal put forward by the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, Australia had rejected it in April.

Australian Foreign Affairs minister Alexander Downer claimed that the scheme was an undesirable policy that would have sucked cheap labour out of the region, but Mr Tavola said the rejection was "unfortunate", The Fiji Times reported.

Australia had instead recommended that a technical college be set up but Mr Tavola said that would simply have meant graduates would have been equipped to emigrate.

By contrast, providing access to unskilled work would provide workers with money and New Zealand with workers it needed on dairy farms and vineyards.

The issue will be canvassed at a two-day Pacific Labour Market Conference, starting on June 29 at Te Papa in Wellington. It is also expected to be discussed again at the Pacific Islands Forum meeting in Tonga later this year.

- NZPA