Transcript
Next month Tonga will mark the tenth anniversary of its participation in New Zealand's RSE scheme. It is the second largest contributor to the horticulture and viticulture sectors in New Zealand with more than 1600 workers making the journey from Tonga last year. Vanuatu is the largest supplying around 4000 last year and Samoa a close third with around 1400. Tonga's RSE liason officer in New Zealand Sefita Haouli said a lot of work has gone in to getting Tonga's RSE participation where it is today.
"That is a very very high number of our unemployed and members of our more needy families, our more deprived families to be able to come and earn a living."
But it has not all been smooth sailing. Tonga has the highest rates of workers failing to turn up for work and even absconding all together. In fact Mr Haouli says in the first four years of the scheme around 40 Tongans absconded because of a disagreement with their contractor and today at least 15 Tongans remain unaccounted for. Mr Haouli says the approach Tonga is taking to try and address the problem is prevention.
"And part of that happens by making sure that the people that we select to come over are carefully vetted. So that we can understand why the are in New Zealand to work and more importantly they actually have good reason to go back."
The same approach was touted by Tonga's prime minister 'Akilisi Pohiva as a solution to a recent increase in the number of young Tongan seasonal workers who have been misbehaving. Alcohol related incidents last year and this year both resulted in some workers being sent home.There have been allegations in New Zealand media that some of these men had also committed serious sex crimes. During a joint press conference in Nuku'alofa last week Mr Pohiva apologised to New Zealand's prime minister Bill English for any strain the incidents had placed on the relationship between the two countries and assured Mr English that the issue was being dealt with.
"We will continue to make sure that the selection process from this end is done properly so that we can make sure that the people that we select from this end they are the right people to do the work."
New Zealand Prime Minister Bill English said more than 10,000 Pacific workers participate in seasonal work in New Zealand each year and the majority of them contribute positively to the scheme. Mr English said he was confident that those who did misbehave were being dealt with and measures looked at to reduce such instances.
"Both in my visit to Samoa and to Tonga I have been impressed to find the prime ministers of each country taking a close personal interest in the behaviour of the RSE workers and I am satisfied that they will do whatever they can. Now that is not a guarantee that everyone of them will behave perfectly. But I am sure they are going to do what they can to reduce the opportunities."
Sefita Haouli says the increase in behavioural problems among Tongan workers is directly related to a change in policy favouring younger, fitter workers over older ones. Mr Haouli says while there are obvious teething problems with the policy he believes it is the right one.
"The transition to younger workers in a way is actually meeting the objectives of the scheme. The scheme was there to address unemployment and poverty. That is for our end of it, for New Zealand it offers you a steady stream of workers that you can count on, committed to you to be able to help do the work to help lift our horticulture and viticulture sector."
Looking to the future, Tongan workers are part of a pilot group of Pacific construction workers helping out in the Christchurch rebuild and there is interest from the region for New Zealand to also consider Pacific workers for semi-skilled labour in other areas such as hospitality and old age care. According to Sefita Haouli ten years on Tonga's participation in seasonal work has been a mostly positive one.
