Many farms and fruit orchards rely heavily on overseas workers under the Pacific Australia labour mobility scheme to help fill jobs on farms. But in the past four years, almost 1-hundred pacific workers have died here and hundreds more have been injured.
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00:00On New Year's Day, Mokenmal Tungtung was working on a NSW farm when he entered a dam
00:07and drowned.
00:08He'd previously been a part of the Pacific Labor Mobility Scheme, but left and had found
00:12work independently.
00:13There's a lot of questions coming up.
00:17The manager or the owner of the farm has to have care over the employees.
00:24Employer P&J Harrison's sons declined to comment while SafeWork NSW investigates, but
00:29told the ABC it prioritises the safety of its employees.
00:33At least 84 Pacific workers have died in Australia in the last four years.
00:3719 deaths are under investigation.
00:40Experts warn Pacific workers aren't given adequate information in Australia, leading
00:44to preventable accidents.
00:46Not a lot is given to them in their native tongue, whether it be the training, whether
00:51it be education around the systems.
00:53Besides drownings, car accidents and medical issues have also been a leading cause of
00:58death.
00:59Pacific workers are also vulnerable to exploitation, and often don't have adequate health or life
01:04insurance.
01:05Like Moken, thousands have left the Palm Scheme, often citing poor working conditions.
01:10A lot of them come in quite deflated, discouraged.
01:14Valencia Paquete runs a boarding house for disengaged workers.
01:18They don't understand how hard it is to live in Australia.
01:22This worker, who didn't want to be identified, left his employer, saying he earned far less
01:26than promised.
01:27I feel pretty helpless, yeah.
01:30I don't know what to do, I don't know where to go.
01:32The Australian Government has announced a raft of reforms to improve the scheme, including
01:37adding more interpreters.
01:38But there are calls for more reform.
01:40We have seen, unfortunately, far too many abuses of the Palm Scheme.
01:44I think the Palm Scheme is failing the Pacific Islanders, big time.
01:49Back in Vanuatu, the Maltungtung family wait patiently to find out what happened to Moken.
01:54Please pray for us, that there will be justice.