By Staff Writer
Samoa has a waiting pool of 3,000 workers who can easily meet the urgent demand in New Zealand and Australia for farm harvest work under the RSE Scheme.
There are independent working groups as well with their own connections.
The hold up is the need for health security measures in both countries to be in place in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The Commerce Industry and Labour Minister Lautafi Selafi Purcell is keen to see an approved process in place for bringing the workers in from Samoa for these job opportunities.
“We do have a group of about 70 workers on standby to fly out to New Zealand next month under the scheme, but we have a large pool to call on in a snap to meet the demand,” Lautafi noted.
The Minister said there are immigration systems in place already for RSE workers to follow and make travel out of Samoa easier.
The RSE scheme provides for a counterpart authority in the two countries working together with Samoa and other island countries included in the work programme.
“If a strawberry farmer wants to hire workers from Samoa it has to be approved first by the national body that runs the RSE scheme.
“There are inspection visits to the farm and other obligations the farmer has to meet like accommodations before it is cleared for workers under the RSE scheme.
“We are them officially informed of how many workers are needed and we take it from there.”
Lautafi boasted of the high demand for Samoan workers. Farmers are happy with the quality of their work and the reputation of being hard workers.
“Our workers are strong and they seem to enjoy their work by singing along while working.
“Harvesting is not easy work, I would know that because I used to work there too during the school holidays to make some pocket money.”
The Minister is mindful that it is now coming to the main months of harvesting starting in November.
Apples, pears and kiwi fruits are the main harvests for the RSE scheme and it is about to start.
With the pandemic keeping the regular workers like backpackers from returning to the farms for harvesting work the demand for overseas workers is expected to increase.
“New Zealand is going to need a lot of workers coming from the Pacific Islands with restrictions from the pandemic.
“Hopefully by December there’ll be no more community cases of the virus in New Zealand so our workers will go straight to work on arrival rather than be kept in quarantine on arrival for 14 days.”
Lautafi shrugged at Samoa as a COVID-19 free country.
“We have no say in that.”
A large group of local workers have remained in New Zealand and Australia still working after they were encouraged to stay on and continue to work after their contracts run out.
Many have been working close to a year opting to stay on rather than return for a rest and taking their chances of new contract offers.
