rosy

Opinion

All is not rosy

... despite favourable changes in unemploy ment statistics for Pacific Islanders

It could have been the best news the Pacific Island community in New Zealand has had for years.

Official figures showing unemploy ment in New Zealand had dropped to its lowest level since 1988 revealed a dra matic fall in the percentage of unem ployed Island people, who had long suf fered the worst jobless record of any ethnic group in the country.

The March quarterly Household Labour Force Survey showed the per centage of Pacific Island folk unem ployed had fallen from a shocking 21 percent to 15.6 percent, putting them for the first time below the Maori who remained stuck on 19 percent.

Now 15.6 percent is still unaccept ably high, especially when compared with the national all-races figure of 6.6 percent and the new pakeha level of 5.2 percent.

But it did seem on the face of it that things were looking up for the 15 differ ent South Pacific peoples who live in this country and had suffered most from 11 years of economic restructuring that decimated workforces in the factories and building sites where the majority of them had jobs.

The snag was the same survey showed that while employment levels for every other ethnic group had risen in the previous 12 months, there was no change in the number of Pacific Island

people actually in work.

What appeared to have happened is that a lot of them had simply dropped out of the system - they had not found jobs but were no longer registered as unemployed or looking for work.

Although New Zealand’s economic recovery had created 76,000 new jobs over the previous year, there was no sign that many of them had gone to island workers.

The other studies by Statistics New Zealand seemed to bear out the sugges tion that the plight of the island commu nity was not improving.

One showed that joblessness among fathers in the Pacific Island households was four times that of European fami-

lies. The other that dependency on wel fare benefits in the community was appallingly high.

It revealed that island people as a whole received 64 percent more in ben efits than they paid in tax - almost the exact reversal of the situation for perked families. Maori, by comparison, received 50 percent more in benefits than they paid in personal income tax.

The Islanders plight had its origins in the halcyon days of the early 1970 s when the country boasted an unemploy ment rate below one percent.

Island workers, many of whom had little prospect of jobs at home, were encouraged to come to New Zealand where they had little trouble finding employment in factories and on building sites and farms and could earn good money to send to families back home.

Most were in manual labouring jobs which were the first to go when eco nomic restructuring began in the mid ’Bos. New Zealand factories today are technologically advanced and the island workers simply do not have the skills

required by modem industry.

The older ones have been consigned to a reserve pool of labour that is bigger than the country needs and youngsters, often less educated than their European counterparts, are competing for work in a tight job market. The figures show that nearly 17 percent of all under 20-year

olds are unemployed and the rate for island teenagers is more than twice this.

Marion Smith, director of the Pacific Island Chamber of Commerce, Auckland, believes barriers such as lan guage and stereotyping are keeping Pacific Island people out of jobs.

She was reported as saying: “I think there’s still a great deal of perception which sees Pacific Island people as fac tory workers or unskilled labourers.”

She said employers did not see other skills or abilities they might have or, with encouragement, be able to develop.

Many, for instance, had a high level of manual dexterity, she said. They also had a natural inclination towards jobs in tourism and the hospitality industry but were excluded because they lacked a perfect command of the English lan guage.

The government is well aware of the dangers of social and economic inequal ities running along ethnic lines. Prime Minister Jim Bolger has talked of the risk of New Zealand entering the next century with a substantial and growing underclass of Pacific Island people (and Maori) trapped in a cycle of dependen cy.

The government is pinning its hopes on continued economic growth produc ing national prosperity that will trickle down to the less privileged sectors of society.

Its opponents are not sure that this will happen without some form of affir mative action to check the impact of unemployment going from generation to generation.

Education and job retraining are obviously the keys to reducing welfare dependency but both are long-term solu tions because the problem has already become so deeply entrenched that it is going to be a long slow process to recti

fy it.

Cultural differences hamper attempts by Pacific Island families to make the most of their lot, as was shown by a case in Porirua, near Wellington, in May.

Samoan Livi Manusina Finau cut $lOO off his family’s two-monthly power bill by using traditional outdoor cooking methods instead of the oven.

The trouble was neighbours com plained about the smoke and the local council said he had to get a $7O-permit for the shelter over his background umu pit. The council warned that erecting a structure without a permit could carry a maximum fine of $200,000 plus $20,000 for each day it remained stand ing.

“I’m just trying to save us some money,” Finau said. “It seems the coun cil doesn’t want us to.”

From

David Barber

in Wellington