NAURUANS recruited to work at
Australia's reopened detention centre in the Pacific are being paid as
little as $4 an hour, up to 10 times less than the Australian citizens
working alongside them in kitchens, as guards, cleaners and as
maintenance and office workers.
Last month, Julia Gillard was critical of billionaire Gina
Rinehart's suggestion Australians must compete with Africans prepared to
work for $2 a day, saying it was "not the Australian way to toss people
$2, to toss them a gold coin, and them ask them to work for a day".
But
it has emerged that some residents of Nauru, the republic where more
than 25 per cent of the population were assessed as living below the
poverty line in 2006, are not happy that their people are being paid at a
different rate to Australians by a contractor engaged by the Gillard
government.
Resident Clint Deidenang acknowledges that $4 an hour
is not a low wage in Nauru, but says the pay rates for the estimated 70
indigenous Nauruans employed by Transfield Services are much less than
they first thought they would receive when they were recruited by the
logistics and maintenance company. Mr Deidenang said there were high
hopes and much excitement last month when Transfield representatives
came to the Nauru Aussie Rules grand final to hand out flyers about work
opportunities at the new detention centre.
"People quit their jobs to work for the detention centre because they
thought it would be a lot of money for their family," Mr Deidenang
said. "It turned out to be not very different and much less than the
Australians get."
The Australian has been told the locals' rates of pay range from between $4 and $10 an hour.
By
comparison, Australian detention centre workers employed by
subcontractor Wilson Security for Transfield Services on Nauru are
believed to earn about $40 an hour including allowances. Detention
centre workers employed at the Christmas Island immigration detention
centre by subcontractor MSS are paid $38 an hour including meal
allowances.
The Department of Immigration and Citizenship
yesterday defended Transfield Services, which told The Australian it was
unable to comment under the terms of its agreement with the government.
"Transfield,
as with all service providers, is required to ensure its staff are paid
in accordance with relevant regulations, awards and conditions," a
departmental spokesman said. "It's not appropriate for the department to
go into detail about individual salaries or the pay and conditions
except to say that the department is satisfied that Transfield is
meeting its contractual obligations in relation to all of its staff."
Mr
Deidenang, who works for a Nauruan construction company, said his
people were paid more when the detention centre was run by the
International Organisation for Migration during the Howard government.
"My twin cousins were both working for them as lifeguards earning a
monthly pay of $1600," he said.
"Nauruans will never ever forget that
glorious day."
Yesterday a spokesman for the IOM said: "We feel we
paid appropriate market rates after consultation with the government
and our own research."
A spokesman for the Nauruan government, Rod
Henshaw, believed different rates of pay applied when the detention
centre was open under the Howard government but the $4 an hour some were
now earning was equivalent to what a senior public servant earned in
Nauru.
There were other benefits from negotiations with Transfield, Mr Henshaw said.
"One
of the conditions was that where possible (and appropriate) support
service organisations would employ staff from local communities and
purchase goods and other services locally where possible. The rationale
behind this was based on the experience last time when huge amounts of
food and other products were flown in. But against that, it must be said
there was very little of that in supply on Nauru in 2001 and the
imports were necessary. These days the economic climate is vastly
improved and therefore Nauruan private enterprises have grown
accordingly."
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