Illegal workers `tempting'

Low labour prices could be tempting some Marlborough vineyard contractors to use illegal labour to stay afloat, says one contractor.

BK Horticulture director Ajay Gaur said there were hundreds of illegal workers in the region and the rock-bottom labour prices fuelled by the fall in grape prices meant some contractors might take the cheaper option over letting their business go under.

His comments follow the sentencing of the three Contract Labour Services (CLS) directors in the Napier District Court on Friday.

Michael Porter, 53, Miles Elliott, 45, and Dharminder "Bubbly" Singh, 42, were jailed for three years on a representative charge of conspiring to aid and abet foreign nationals to remain in the country illegally between 2004 and 2006.

Their company employed more than 500 workers in vineyards and orchards nationwide. Singh's 63-year-old father Surjit, who worked as a company clerk, was sentenced to nine months' home detention.

Thornhill Contracting South Island operations manager Ian Hunter said the CLS directors had got what they deserved.

The introduction of the Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme had cleaned up the industry in the last few years, he said.

"There's still riff-raff contractors round but they are getting less and less all the time."

Provine managing director Ken Prouting said illegal labour was not as rampant as it once was, but more people would be turning a blind eye because of the difficult financial times in the industry.

There will always be illegal labour in Marlborough because the size of the region made it easier to hide them, he said.

The three-year jail sentence was "a pitiful bloody sentence".

- The Marlborough Express

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