The Public Service Commission will review the Accredited Employer Work Visa scheme’s processes after a whistleblower came forward with allegations, Immigration Minister Andrew Little says.<\/p>\n
At a stand-up just after 5pm, Little told reporters he received an anonymous letter on Tuesday night, which came from an internal whistleblower.<\/p>\n
“The particular allegations were that some checks on employers were not being made, and some checks as part of the job check process were not being made.<\/p>\n
“I spoke to the Public Service Commission yesterday and to the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment yesterday about that.<\/p>\n
“There was enough in the letter, not withstanding it was anonymous, that led me to believe that it was important that I assure myself that the rules for processing those, particularly Accredited Employer Work Visa applications, are being done thoroughly and that the allegations in the letter are investigated.”<\/p>\n
Over the past few weeks, he had been given assurances by Immigration NZ officials – as part of regular reporting to the minister – that Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) were being followed, he said.<\/p>\n
“If the allegations I’ve received on Tuesday night are anything to go by, it appears that that may not be happening. I need to be assured that the systems in place are robust and those checks are being made.”<\/p>\n
The purpose of SPOs was to prove the employer was a real business which was operating and had been for a year. Little said he expected that to be carried out in every application but the whistleblower alleged that was not happening.<\/p>\n
“There are requirements to check the integrity and genuineness of the business, that is part of the Standard Operating Procedures, and the allegation that I saw in the correspondence was that that was not being complied with in every case.”<\/p>\n
He said he was satisfied with the SPOs but the problem could be with compliance, which would form part of the review.<\/p>\n
Little said he did not accept this was a resourcing issue.<\/p>\n
“We knew that after the borders opened that we needed to put additional resourcing into Immigration because they’d scaled back, we put the additional resourcing in, but it is the job of management to make sure that the applications that come in … that Standard Operating Procedures are being followed.”<\/p>\n
The Public Service Commission will appoint a reviewer – likely to be a former senior public servant.<\/p>\n
There will be discussion about terms of reference, and the minister expects to hear back within a week or so from the Public Service Commission before the review gets underway.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, the minister did not believe suspending the scheme was necessary.<\/p>\n
In a statement, Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) chief executive Carolyn Tremain said they supported the review.<\/p>\n
“It is important that there is trust and confidence in the immigration system and we remove opportunities for migrant exploitation. We are committed to improving any policies and processes deemed necessary.<\/p>\n
“The outcome of this review will allow us to further refine the AEWV (Accredited Employer Work Visa) and inform settings to better respond to emerging issues.<\/p>\n
“While the review is being carried out, we will continue our work, including the processing of applications and responding to cases of migrant exploitation as a priority.”<\/p>\n
RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Public Service Commission will review the Accredited Employer Work Visa scheme’s processes after a whistleblower came forward with allegations, Immigration Minister Andrew Little says. At a stand-up just after 5pm, Little told reporters he received an anonymous letter on Tuesday night, which came from an internal whistleblower. “The particular allegations were that some checks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":7315,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7314","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\/7314","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=7314"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7316,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7314\/revisions\/7316"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}