Vanuatu worker arrivals stalled ahead of upcoming NT mango harvest

THE scheduled arrival of 170 Vanuatu mango pickers into the NT this week has been pushed back until next month due to ongoing government delays

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THE scheduled arrival of 170 Vanuatu mango pickers into the NT this week has been pushed back until next month due to government delays.

It comes as Prime Minister Scott Morrison revealed yesterday an agreement has been made with states to move forward with the Federal Government’s Seasonal Worker Programme.

The Territory will lead the program with a trial to bring 170 workers from Vanuatu to help with the upcoming mango season.

NT Farmers CEO Paul Burke said they had initially pencilled in August 20 as the date workers would arrive in Darwin on a charter flight, but that’s now been pushed back to September 1.

He said they still had to jump through a few more government hoops to ensure the group arrives in the NT and completes 14-day quarantine in time for the start of peak mango season in September.

“It’s just been a complicated process, this all has to go through four different federal departments and two departments in the NT, so we’re running a tad behind,” Mr Burke said.

“We’ve been documenting the process and hopefully that will help to streamline all of this when the program expands across the country.”

A spokesman from Employment Minister Michaelia Cash said the trial was progressing in line with all the necessary health conditions and requirements.

Mr Burke said NT’s mango industry needs more than 2000 seasonal workers to pick their annual crop, which injects on average $120 million into the NT economy every year.

“We’ll be pushing to expand on this Vanuatu trial and get more charter flights to the NT soon,” he said.

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He said at this stage industry would be underwriting the costs of the charter flight and mandatory quarantine for all 170 workers, which is estimated to amount to about half a million dollars.

The NT Government has refused to subsidise any of the quarantine costs.

“This will be a significant cost on the industry, but we have no other options,” Mr Burke said.

“We want locals to fill these jobs, but the locals themselves don’t necessarily want to do this work. Vanuatu is a good fit for this trial because they have been COVID-19 free for a fair period of time, and we have workers ready to go there.

Originally published as Vanuatu worker arrivals stalled ahead of upcoming NT mango harvest