Main area: Migration
Theme: Labour mobility
Assessment: Partially ODA-eligible
Provider country: New Zealand
Recipient country: Pacific Islands (Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Vanuatu, Kiribati, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu)
Implementing agency: Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment
Budget (NZD million): 5 for RSE WTP; 10 for SPP
Year(s): 2017-2022
Purpose code: NA
Case number: Migration / 17
Pacific Islands Recognized Seasonal Employers programme
The Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) work policy was introduced to address seasonal labour shortages in the horticulture and viticulture industries in New Zealand. The policy allows for RSE accredited employers to recruit workers from overseas where no New Zealanders are available.
The RSE Workers Training Programme (RSE WTP) was launched in 2012 to provide trainings to workers engaged in the RSE scheme and working in New Zealand. The Strengthening Pacific Partnership (SPP) programme supports Pacific Islands Countries (PICs) to facilitate workers’ participation to labour mobility opportunities (notably RSE in New Zealand, but other sectors as well and possibly other countries), and maximise the development benefits of labour mobility.
The SPP provides support to PICs to facilitate and benefit from labour mobility opportunities and minimise the risks of labour mobility. Activities include: capacity building for Labour Sending Units from PICs; Engagement with PICs, New Zealand and other relevant stakeholders (e.g. Australia); Research to assist in the building of knowledge about Pacific labour mobility through intelligence gathering and data analysis.
RSE WTP overall objective is to maximise the RSE policy development benefits by:
Supporting workers with the necessary life skills to adapt to life in New Zealand;
Maximising the income workers take home through financial training and improved workplace skills;
Increasing skills that workers can take home such as chainsaw skills, sewing, solar installation and building techniques.
Trainings include: English, numeracy and maths, financial and computer literacy, health (sexual health, basic first aid and hygiene) and life-skills training.
Medium-term outcomes include increased remittances; participants returning home with increased workplace skills, promoting improved health, safety (including sexual health), and community and climate resilience practices at their workplace and in their families; increased business enterprises in RSE home countries etc.
This activity is deemed partially ODA-eligible.
Expenditures required to operationalise the RSE scheme are not eligible, as the programme intends to primarily fill labour market gaps in New Zealand (see Criterion 7). Employers must prove they cannot fill the position with a local worker, which illustrates that the primary objective of the scheme is New Zealand’s interest. Whilst it does advance economic development for Pacific Island countries through remittances and repatriated savings, it is primarily implementing an immigration policy.
Research to evaluate/improve the RSE scheme is considered partially ODA-eligible, as some of the outputs focus on advancing Pacific development/welfare (e.g. surveying remittances sent by workers and investigating the family/community effects of absent workers from their islands).
The Workers Training Programme (WTP) is ODA-eligible. It consists in a learner-led training that provides RSE workers with skills that they can take home (including English, numeracy and life-skills training, but excluding training to get a New Zealand driving license). Although unusual for a development initiative in that it occurs within the donor country, the outcomes of the WTP are wholly development-focused and in-line with the focus on skills required for ODA-eligibility under Criterion 7.
This work was approved and declassified by the Development Assistance Committee’s Working Party on Development Finance Statistics.
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