Tongans to return

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33775, 22 February 1975, Page 3

Tongans to return

(N.Z. Press Association) AUCKLAND, Feb. 21

Tongan migrant workers who are unable to find work for periods of their six-nionth stay in New Zealand, will not be allowed any extension of their entry permits. According to Mr David Williams, secretary of the Citizens Association for Racial Equality, this decision by the Minister of Immigration (Mr Colman)—-given in a letter to C.A.R.E. —is a reversal of an >tfer to extend permits by . month to 1| months.

Mr Colman proposed the maximum i J 2 -month extension, to ensure that each worker got a guaranteed period of six months work here, when he met a deputation on the workers’ plight on January 24, said Mr Williams. But in the letter to Mr Williams, the Minister says that it has been decided, after talks with Tongan Government officials, not to extend permits. Mr Colman said he could not accept the allegation by the deputation that Tongan working visitors were not warned of the difficulties they would face in finding employment if they arrived here in December. He had been informed that the immigration attache in Tonga had issued warnings over the Tongan radio network and through the “Tonga Chronicle,” he said. Mr Williams said today that the future of the Tongan economy, which relied heavily on remittances from workers in New Zealand, was now bleak.