‘No talking, singing ... we had no freedom’ on Federal Government’s Seasonal Worker Program

WHEN Losalini Waqa and Eleni Baxter arrived at Melbourne Airport on Saturday they couldn’t stop crying.

FOR THE WEEKLY TIMES ONLY DO NOT USE UNLESS YOU HAVE BEEN GIVEN PERMISSION BY THE EDITOR ED GANNON. Workers from Fiji at Tullamarine Airport, Melbourne, leaving for home , L-R: Eleni Baxter, Losalini Dikaitani, Picture Yuri Kouzmin

WHEN Losalini Waqa and Eleni Baxter arrived at Melbourne Airport on Saturday they couldn’t stop crying.

They had been bundled into a minibus at 6am and carted from their accommodation near Robinvale to Mildura ­Airport, where they were flown to Melbourne to be sent home to Fiji.

Both women had come to Australia from Fiji — where 35 per cent of people live below the poverty line — as part of the Federal Government’s Seasonal Worker Program.

RELATED COVERAGE:

Worker ‘slave’ shame

Ordered out after they complained

A blind eye turned to slavery

Abuse of foreign workers is a stain on this country

The program is designed to help alleviate poverty in the Pacific region and provide ­labour for Australian farms during peak times. But when the Fijian women arrived in Australia, they said they found “horrible” conditions and were treated like “slaves”.

They allege their employer, PlantGrowPick, underpaid them, verbally abused them and refused access to medical care and religious freedom.

And after walking off the farm three weeks ago in protest, they claim their supervisor and the Fijian Govern­ment told them they would be jailed for up to three years when they went back to Fiji if they didn’t return to the farm.

They returned to work, but last week six of them were sacked and told they were being sent home.

At Melbourne Airport the group was confused and distraught. They had no idea of their visa status and once they decided to stay, they had ­nowhere to sleep.

Ms Baxter said she was scared to go home because she faced jail for breaching her visa conditions.

She claimed while working she was not allowed to visit her sick sister, who lives in Robinvale. “We weren’t allowed to leave camp unsupervised,” Ms Baxter said. “The contractor’s mother told us not to talk to each other, laugh, sing — we had no freedom.

“The way they were treating us was terrible ... they thought we were from the village and didn’t know better.”

Mrs Waqa, a 51-year-old grandmother, said she would have stayed in Fiji and harvested cane if she knew she would be treated so badly in Australia. “I came here for my family to have some money.”

Pay claim: A payslip from PlantGrowPick that shows a worker received $1.20 an hour.

While working on the farm Mrs Waqa said she was forced to survive on donated oranges, because the food provided by her employer was insufficient.

The workers, all of whom identified as being religious, were not ­allowed to practice their faiths and were expected to attend a Mormon church, the religion of the contractor’s mother.

Under the Seasonal Worker Program, workers must be told the location of and given acc­ess to religious and recreat­ional centres and have access to community support.

“I believe I am being sent home because of my religion and because I am asking for the truth,” Ms Baxter said.

Fijian Community Assoc­iation Victoria president Vonivate Tawase Driu wanted the problem solved.

“It’s a good program, it helps people from the (Pacific) Islands, but not when they come and get exploited.”