People who will be part of the Seasonal Workers Scheme will now be chosen by community members of rural communities.

This has been confirmed by the Employment Minister, Jone Usamate, following the four year ban that was put in place in some of the rural communities and villages.

“Now, the people that are going are being selected from the communities, they look at everybody that wants to go and they decide who is going to go. So we have the communities, if somebody from your village does not deliver, then your village will be stamped aside for the next four years because we still have a long list of people who are there to go, we will give them an opportunity to go.”

Usamate says the ban will only be lifted if more seasonal workers improve their performance under the scheme.

More than two hundred Fijians are currently under the scheme with more than a thousand in the scheme’s ready pool.