Data supplied by MBIE to the Farmers Weekly highlights the difficulty primary sector employers face recruiting overseas staff.
Just a handful of foreign dairy farm workers and agricultural machinery operators have been granted access following Government changes to the class exception policy approved in December.
Data supplied by the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) reveals just 51 foreign dairy farm workers and 15 mobile plant operators have been granted visas under the new class exception policy.
Despite pleas from the meat industry for a class exemption for Halal butchers, approval for inclusion in the scheme is yet to be considered by Cabinet.
The uptake of the revised policy is well short on the number the Government allowed for.
In December the Government approved border class exceptions for 200 mobile plant machinery operators, 40 shearers and 50 wool handlers and amended existing class border exception for 200 dairy workers.
The changes allow foreign workers to isolate at home, but to participate in the scheme, employers must pay their foreign staff one and a half times the median wage.
MBIE’s immigration (border and funding) policy manager Kirsty Hutchison said the Government has also recently extended visas for 8000 primary sector workers and allowed 6500 RSE workers across the border.
Data supplied by MBIE to the Farmers Weekly highlights the difficulty primary sector employers face recruiting overseas staff.
The global shut down has restricted the movement of people, but since those conditions have eased, there has been a minimal increase in workers coming across the border for the last two years.
Since last June, MBIE has granted class exemptions for 109 agricultural mobile plant operators, of which 103 have entered the country.
This is slightly less than the 134 approvals and 120 arrivals in the year to April 2021.
Since June 2020, 38 of the 45 vets who sought special visas have arrived and 58 of the 64 shearers that were granted visas.
The data for dairy farm staff is even more telling.
Since June 2020, class exemptions were granted for 51 dairy farm assistants, assistant farm managers and herd managers. About 20 have actually arrived.
Hutchison said the updated class exemption for dairy farm workers was implemented on January 1 and three weeks later for machinery operators.
“The other border class exceptions have only recently been implemented or are soon to be implemented, with no visas approved as yet,” Hutchison said.
“These latest class exceptions were approved and announced in December, with a February implementation in mind, recognising the lead-in times required to operationalise a class exception.”
