The Ministry of Employment has changed its recruitment criteria for the seasonal workers program for Australia and New Zealand.
According to the Minister Semi Koroilavesau, they will now recruit Fijians from villages in rural isolated communities.
“We are actually using the social structure of the villages and settlements and we’ll pick people from there to go on this pilot where the, for example in a Tikina, if you have six villages , they will pick two from those villages and then we’ll have a team leader that will be taking those 12 people as their team leader.”
The current work ready pool will still be used and groupings via tikinas will be stressed.
However the final recruitment will be dependent on the employers.
Other changes to the recruitment process includes an increased Body Mass Index which goes from 29 to 33.
Currently there are 81 Fijians working in New Zealand under the recognised seasonal workers scheme and 26 in Australia.
