The government has announced 32 new health sector roles are to be added to the Straight to Residence pathway of the Green List to help prepare the health system for the coming winter.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins made the announcement at his regular post-Cabinet press conference at the Beehive Theatrette this afternoon.<\/p>\n
Forty health sector roles are being added to the pathway – eight of those were already on the Green List, but would have had to work for two years to attain residence in New Zealand, while the remaining 32 are newly added.<\/p>\n
Speaking at a post-Cabinet meeting this afternoon, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said, despite progress in recruiting health workers and in lifting incomes for health workers including through pay equity changes, more work needed to be done to attract workers from overseas.<\/p>\n
“It is vital that New Zealand’s immigration settings are not seen as an unnecessary barrier to workers wanting to make a life here in New Zealand.”<\/p>\n
He said the changes announced today reflected the feedback from the health sector.<\/p>\n
Hipkins said since the decision in December to put midwives and registered nurses on the straight-to-residence pathway, the goverment had received some 3600 health sector applications including 1400 nurses, 200 doctors and other specialists and 95 GPs.<\/p>\n
“In the same period, we’ve seen nearly 3000 health professionals arriving in the country.<\/p>\n
“We know that moving countries is one of the biggest decisions anyone can make in their lives and in the lives of their families. With these changes, the aim is to provide additional certainty when they’re making these decisions that they’ll be able to create a permanent home and a great life here in New Zealand.”<\/p>\n
He said the Green List changes would start to apply from 29 May, about seven weeks away.<\/p>\n
Boat skippers and deck hands are also being added to a time-limited residence pathway in the transport sector, adding to international bus and truck drivers.<\/p>\n
“Our seaside cities’ ferries form an essential part of the public transport system so it’s critical that ferry service operators have access to the workers to enhance the availability of these workers,” Hipkins said.<\/p>\n
He said the market rate for skippers was already above the median wage, and deck hands would need to be paid at least the median wage. This will start from late May.<\/p>\n
Health Minister Ayesha Verrall told\u00a0Checkpoint\u00a0<\/i>this was an important and proactive step as part of the immigration rebalance.<\/p>\n
The closure of the borders during the pandemic meant that access to overseas health workers had been limited and the workforce itself was impacted by Covid-19, with about 100,000 health care workers around the world dying from it, Verrall said.<\/p>\n
“We do have to re-evaluate what we’re doing to attract health care workers and I think we’re now in a very competitive place.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
SOURCE RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The government has announced 32 new health sector roles are to be added to the Straight to Residence pathway of the Green List to help prepare the health system for the coming winter. Prime Minister Chris Hipkins made the announcement at his regular post-Cabinet press conference at the Beehive Theatrette this afternoon. Forty health sector […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":4028,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4027"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4029,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4027\/revisions\/4029"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}