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Work and Income has apologised to a curry factory for calling its attempts to hire a chef an immigration rort typical of Indian employers.
Jewel of India owner Ram Rai has complained of "racist overtones" from government departments in his nine-month battle to bring in a skilled tandoori chef he has lined up in India.
Immigration officials say Mr Rai must find a chef here - but Work and Income cannot come up with one.
Mr Rai discovered Work and Income believed he was trying to flout the rules when he found emails about his case.
One email to an immigration official said: "For your information, it is becoming a common issue with these employers testing our system for such purposes. And we were expecting this from such employer."
Mr Rai said the attitude of Work and Income showed it was discriminatory towards Indian employers.
"They made an ignorant and premeditated decision."
Yesterday, head of Work and Income Patricia Reade apologised to Mr Rai, saying the comments by staff were "totallyinappropriate".
Jewel of India is a supermarket curry range based on the pioneering Indian restaurant of the same name in Mission Bay. It employs 25 New Zealand citizens.
Mr Rai began searching for the tandoori chef in November and lined one up in India because of a known shortage in New Zealand.
The chef was to replace one of the factory's three chefs who left to start his own restaurant.
The intended chef was no relation to him or anyone at the factory but was prepared to work for the $31,296 a year on offer.
Mr Rai had never bought a worker in on a work permit before.
Mr Rai said because the chef was required to make and taste-test each individual batch of curry, a special set of skills was needed that could not be easily trained.
He advertised the job with Work and Income, who could not provide a candidate.
However, Immigration would not approve the work permit for the chef in India because there were chefs available in New Zealand.
Mr Rai said he thought the stand-off was "some kind of joke" until he saw the Work and Income emails.
"I saw the attitude that was behind this. Now I am just going to fight harder because it is not right to treat people like this."
Ms Reade said Mr Rai had to consider whether in a strong market the terms and conditions were good enough.
The Department of Labour's immigration service said Mr Rai's work permit application was still under consideration.
Curry chef
* Earns: $31,200 a year.
* Works: Monday to Friday, 9am-5pm.
* Requires: 5-6 years experience in tandoori cooking, including oven for naan bread.
* Work in team of three chefs making 5000kgs of curry a week.
* Must be able to produce flavour consistency over 25 different curries.
