Overseas fee deal deemed lawful

By MATHEW DEARNALEY

An Indian restaurateur and immigration consultant has escaped having to repay a migrant who claimed to have handed over $15,000 to "buy" a job in Auckland.

The Employment Court has ruled that a century-old legislative ban on charging job-seekers premiums for the chance to work does not apply to deals struck outside New Zealand.

But Judge Graeme Colgan said Parliament might need to consider whether such fundamental elements of employment law as the Wages Protection Act should be confined to "the boundaries of the New Zealand quarter-acre in today's global village".

He accepted an appeal by Kuldeep Kumar Mehta, former joint owner and now manager of the Exotiqa restaurant on Princes Wharf, against an Employment Relations Authority order to refund money paid to him in India.

Kanayalal Holaram Duhanja migrated to Auckland in 2001 after Mr Mehta offered him a management job at an associated restaurant owned by the Exotiqa Ltd in Mt Eden, where the authority heard he was promised but did not receive a monthly wage of $1500.

He said he ended up deep in debt, as most of the $15,000 fee he paid Mr Mehta was borrowed money.

But the court dismissed an appeal by Mr Mehta against an associated employment authority ruling that he, rather than the restaurant company, was the employer of another worker for whom he was found personally liable for wage arrears of $7607.

The authority also ordered Exotiqa Ltd last year to pay $21,014 in arrears to Mr Duhanja and three other workers, and $36,500 in penalties to the Labour Department.

Its total order in favour of the five workers, now minus Mr Duhanja's $15,000 repayment, amounted to $65,121.

But none of the money has been recovered, as Mr Mehta says his partner in Exotiqa Ltd has disappeared and the company no longer exists.

The Labour Department was considering ways of recovering the remaining $65,121 from the employment authority's award.

Judge Colgan, despite his ruling about the finite territorial reach of New Zealand's employment laws, found that about $5500 of the money paid to Mr Mehta in India was for migration assistance sought by Mr Duhanja.

He said this was the standard fee charged by a firm which Mr Mehta ran with his father in Mumbai, A and NZ Consultants Ltd, leaving $9500 as the employment premium.

Judge Colgan noted prohibitions against such premiums in laws reaching back to the 1901 Factories Act.

Mr Mehta denied this yesterday, saying the amount charged was his standard fee for business migration, the category under which Mr Duhanja entered New Zealand.

He said his father was now solely in charge of the consultancy, and refused to disclose how many people it helped to migrate here.