The Seasonal Employment Unit, (S.E.U.) under the umbrella of the Ministry of Prime Minister and Cabinet, (M.P.M.C.) is proceeding with a binding agreement with villages across Samoa
The signing ceremony for the Memorandum of Understanding, (M.O.U.) with village mayors from Upolu will take place tomorrow (Monday) at the STA Samoan Fale at 11:30am.
Signing ceremonies for Savai’i will be at the Apita o Pisaga next week Tuesday at 10:00am.
The M.O.U., according to the M.P.M.C’s Chief Executive Agafili Tomaimano Shem Leo is designed to represent the governments and the Samoan seasonal workers best interest in protecting the employment program for Samoans to work overseas on a temporary basis.
M.P.M.C’s Chief Executive Agafili Tomaimano Shem Leo says it will cover the New Zealand Recognized Seasonal Employees (RSE)), Australia's Seasonal Workers Program, (SWP), Canterbury Initiative Trade Employment and Approval in Principal Scheme, (AIP) in New Zealand.
“The MOU is for village leaders to play a leading role in mentoring and monitoring their representatives who will be employed under these initiatives,” elaborated Agafili.
“And it will also include repercussions such as blacklisting the entire village from the employment program for a certain time period if one of their RSE workers violates the condition of their temporary employment overseas.
A release from the Ministry of the Prime Minister and Cabinet says a public forum was hosted jointly by the M.P.M.C. recently to garner the viewpoints from village pulenu’us for government officials to design the agreement.
For this year close to 1,700 Samoans are working in New Zealand and Australia under these employment opportunities initiated by government to create jobs for low income families in the country.
The New Zealand RSE scheme has the highest number of Samoan workers with 1,600 working in that country during this year’s picking season.