16 February 2013

Government’s Failure To Make Maldives’ Representative Accountable Unacceptable

“Our Government’s failure to pull our representative in the Maldives into line and require that he complies with a local court order is totally unacceptable and bad for our international reputation,” said Service and Food Workers Union National Secretary John Ryall today.

Ten days ago John Ryall emailed a letter to Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully, asking the Minister to address the behaviour of New Zealand’s Consul in the Maldives.

New Zealand consul and businessman Ahmed Saleem is a director of Crown company, which owns the luxury Conrad-Hilton Hotel on the Maldives Island of Rangali. The hotel, where rooms cost more than $2,000 a day, has ignored a court order to reinstate 22 workers who were sacked after taking part in a peaceful stopwork meeting last year. The court ordered the hotel to reinstate the workers and pay lost wages.

In media reports last week the hotel said they were waiting for the outcome of an appeal. However, the scheduled appeal hearing on Monday this week was delayed because Crown Company failed for a second time to provide documentation to the court detailing the process by which the workers were fired.

“It is very concerning that our representative is a director of a business which is in breach of a court request to reinstate workers and equally concerning that our Government is silent,” said John Ryall.

“This is an urgent mater. I understand the Minister is waiting for advice from MFAT. Surely the only advice can be that our representative must abide by the law or relinquish the position of representative of the New Zealand Government.”

John Ryall said the conflict of interest of the New Zealand consul and the call for the New Zealand Government to take action had been widely reported in the Maldives’ media.

“Although there is plenty of room for improvement in our labour laws, New Zealand has always been respected as a law-abiding country. The failure to call Mr Saleem into line is an international embarrassment for our country.”

ENDS

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Mighty River: 'Mum And Dad’ Investors Myth Busted

Green Party research, confirmed by Treasury, shows that half of the shares in Mighty River Power that National sold to retail investors went to just 13,000 people and that 10 percent of the retail shares went to just 400 wealthy people and organisations, Green Party Co-leader Dr Russel Norman said today.

The sale of Mighty River Power saw 113,000 retail investors, referred to as ‘mum and dad’ investors by the National Government, buy 26.9 percent of the company. Analysis by the Greens and Treasury shows that half of those shares were, in fact, purchased by fewer than 13,000 people who bought an average of nearly $35,000 worth of shares...

“The truth is that 98 percent of New Zealanders bought no shares at all. Half the retail shares went to just 0.3 percent of the population, and a tiny group of just 400 wealthy individuals and organisations got 10 percent of the retail shares. More>>