Winz urged to continue with work schemes

A Rotorua business leader is defending work schemes for the unemployed, despite a low success rate.

In the Bay of Plenty region, which covers Rotorua and Tauranga, 329 people have been put through the new Work and Income NZ (Winz) training course Skills for Industry since 2012. Official figures show about a third of those people ended up in work.

The Flexi-Wage scheme funded by Winz to get high-dependency beneficiaries into work has cost a nationwide total of $50.9 million since 2012 - and that is to fund subsidies alone.

In the Bay of Plenty region, $4.4 million has been spent since 2012 paying wage subsidies to employers.

Winz has not measured long-term outcomes of Flexi-Wages or the Skills for Industry programme, but nationwide figures revealed just a 36 per cent employment achievement eight weeks after Skills for Industry course completion.

The Training for Work programme, started by 1523 people in Bay of Plenty, showed a 32 per cent work outcome rate over the past two years.

The funding cost of Skills for Industry cannot be broken down at a regional level. However, $14.3 million was spent nationally in 2012-13 and $12.5 million was spent in 2013-14.

Rotorua Chamber of Commerce chief executive Darrin Walsh said the schemes didn't create opportunities that were not there before but "they do provide an opportunity for the employer to employ someone without the normal advertising process".

Without such schemes in the Rotorua region, "there would be less opportunities for the unskilled to gain employment," Mr Walsh said.

Asked whether some employers could be exploiting cheap labour, Mr Walsh said he would expect any rorting of the system to be quickly sorted out.

"If the [wage subsidy] scheme is being abused in some way then it is up to Winz to police it and take those offending parties off the scheme." Michael Botur