Tauranga labour contractor Jafar Kurisi pleaded guilty to further exploitation charges when he appeared in the Tauranga District Court on 30 January. Photo: NZME
A Tauranga kiwifruit labour contractor has admitted to exploiting four illegal migrant workers.
One of them lived in a crowded garage with 19 others for four months with no heating or insulation.
Some slept on the carpeted garage floor because there were not enough mattresses. The worker later, with five other employees, slept in another garage with holes in it.
Their employer, Jafar Kurisi, 59, from Parkvale, also underpaid them thousands of dollars in wages and charged them $100 rent a week and travel costs for some to get to and from work.
Appearing in the Tauranga District Court on Tuesday, he pleaded guilty to seven charges of exploiting unlawful employees. The charges related to his failure to pay the minimum wage and, in three cases, also holiday pay, between December 1, 2018, and July 22, 2020.
He also pleaded guilty to a further charge of attempting to pervert the course of justice after he tried to get a prosecution witness to make a false statement to Immigration NZ.
Kurisi, also known as Md Wagid Ali, is a repeat offender who was sentenced to 12 months of home detention in 2017 and ordered to pay $55,000 reparation for exploiting 13 workers migrant workers.
Immigration New Zealand (INZ) laid the latest exploitation charges against Kurisi after a joint investigation in 2020 after Zespri reported allegations workers were being exploited.
According to the summary of facts, Kurisi had been involved in labour contracting in the kiwifruit industry for 15 years.
He hired the workers to undertake various tasks at kiwifruit orchards in the Bay of Plenty, such as picking and pruning.
The employees were from Indonesia and Malaysia.
A visa agent had told them they would make good money in New Zealand and they borrowed money to pay for what they believed were work visas and travel costs.
The first victim borrowed the equivalent of NZ$11,850 to pay for the visa and travel from the agent's company to be repaid over three years, the summary said.
The victim was granted a three-month visitor's visa on July 19, 2019, but because he did not speak or read English the worker believed it was a work permit.
The worker lived with up to 19 people in a garage area under Kurisi's house. They each had $100 rent a week deducted from their wages.
The garage was crowded, with no heating or insulation, and because there were not enough mattresses some workers slept on the carpeted floor, the summary said.
In January 2020, Kurisi moved this victim to a small house he owned in Merivale occupied by five others, and they slept in a cold garage with holes in it and continued to pay $100 a week rent taken from his wages.
The summary said that on average the victim worked 51 hours a week and was paid an estimated hourly gross rate of $5 an hour, despite being told his hourly rate would be $13 an hour. Immigration NZ estimates Kurisi underpaid this worker $24,338.54 gross in minimum wages.
Similarly, Kurisi's other victims also paid a visa agent for visa and associated travel costs, believing the payment would qualify them for NZ work permits.
In total, Kurisi's victims were unpaid $121,134.06 gross in minimum wages and three workers also received no holiday pay entitlements.
Judge Paul Geoghegan convicted Kurisi on all charges and remanded him on bail pending sentencing on May 1.
Kurisi's earlier offending related to providing poor-quality accommodation and food and failing to pay minimum wages or holiday pay.
In that case, Kurisi's offending was connected to a high-profile human trafficking case involving Faroz Ali who was the first person in New Zealand to be sentenced for human trafficking when he was jailed for nine-and-a-half years in December 2016 for 15 human trafficking charges involving Fijian nationals.
James Friend, the Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment's national manager of immigration investigation, said in July 2020 that five Tauranga residential properties were searched following allegations that contracting companies were exploiting migrant workers.
"As part of the operation, INZ spoke to 27 people about their immigration status and employment in New Zealand, establishing they were from Indonesia, Malaysia, India and Bangladesh."
Friend said steps were taken to place those people with legitimate employers after the operation, and most initially remained living and working in New Zealand, although the majority had since left the country.
"Kurisi's guilty plea allows our justice system to move forward to sentencing and, importantly, without retraumatising his victims who have now moved on to better stages of their lives," he said.
Friend said he wanted to acknowledge the roles played by the horticulture industry, specifically Zespri, for their investment in helping stamp out this type of behaviour.
Zespri chief executive Dan Mathieson said he welcomed the result of the prosecution, which underlined the industry's commitment to provide a safe working environment and acknowledged the efforts by the Government to help ensure that.
"Any exploitation of workers is unacceptable and our industry is committed to working alongside the Government to ensure our industry is one where people are valued, supported and safe in their jobs, and where the minority, who don't live up to those standards, are held to account," he said.
This article was first published by The New Zealand Herald