Tag Archives: lucrative hoki season

Hundreds of workers flown home to Pacific despite fishing firms’ pleas

Tongan, Samoan and ni-Vanuatu horticulture workers have been redeployed or flown home, to the disappointment of the country’s biggest fishing companies who had asked for help filling hundreds of jobs in their processing plants. Between 200 and 500 workers still had time left on their Recognised Seasonal Employer visas, at the end of fruit-picking season in Nelson and Marlborough. Sealord and Talley’ wrote to the immigration minister asking that workers be given the chance to transfer over to better-paid seafood jobs, to help address a big labour shortage at the start of New Zealand’s lucrative hoki season. >click to read< 09:32