Officers Appointed to Rep, Monitor Workers Overseas
The Minister for Employment, Productivity and Industrial Relation Agni Deo Singh said workers under the Labour Mobility Scheme now had representatives to ensure workplace issues were dealt with in a just manner.
Mr Singh was responding to Leader of the Opposition Inia Seruiratu on Tuesday. Mr Seruiratu asked that given reports of workers’ mistreatment, what was Government doing to ensure workers were “fairly represented” during their time in Australia and New Zealand?
Mr Singh assured Parliament that unlike in the past, workers now had liaison officers appointed to ensure minimum employment standards were observed.
“In Australia, we realised that we didn’t have any representative of ours who could look after our workers.
“Now we have liaison officers looking after our workers’ interest in Australia,” he said.
“I must repeat that in 2021, the Australian Government had already allocated funds for us to appoint a country liaison officer. And we never appointed.
“And now we have appointed three of them and the fourth to be appointed soon.”
Mr Singh said the benefit of this was that workers had a direct link to Pacific representatives who were there to support them.
He said after meeting with his
Australian and New Zealand counterparts and workers’ unions he was assured that minimum standards would be upheld by Australian and New Zealand employers. Mr Singh said there had been 6669 Fijians employed in Australia under labour mobility programmes since 2021.
There are currently 5000 PALM workers from Fiji in Australia and this includes short and long-term workers.
He said there were 700 currently working in New Zealand and 47 were expected to leave for New Zealand next month.