Praneeta Prakash 
The Australian Government is taking further steps to improve the protection and wellbeing of Pacific workers under the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme following reports of exploitation, mistreatment, and worker disengagement.
Speaking at a roundtable talanoa at the Australian High Commission in Suva, DFAT First Assistant Secretary for Labour Mobility, Skills and Education, Jan Hutton, addressed concerns relating to worker abuse and absconding.
She adds the Australian Government has zero tolerance for any form of exploitation.
“I would say the overwhelming majority of our employees and of our stakeholders engage very positively in our PALM scheme, so we are talking about a very, very small number of cases. But even that, no matter how small, is a travesty and something that we’re looking to eradicate and respond to.”
Hutton adds that they have also created a special taskforce to look into the issue of absconding as earlier reports reveals that approximately 400 Fijians absconded since the programs’ inception in 2017.
The Australian Government established last year what we call our Disengagement Taskforce. We brought together representatives from a number of our agencies to look at this. Where we started was to look at the reasons why workers were disengaging from the PALM scheme.
She says the taskforce found that many workers were misled by false promises of better jobs, often outside the legal program.
She adds that Australia has introduced new options, such as allowing workers to transfer to different employers if there are issues and these changes have helped reduce disengagement from 10% to 5%, and numbers continue to drop.
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