Source: Radio New Zealand
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Wellington councillors, national industry groups and drivers are sounding the alarm over immigration settings for bus drivers, warning of a looming shortage.
A residency pathway for bus drivers, brought in in 2022, requires English language to the level of a post-graduate international student, after two years on a working visa.
Drivers have been warning the test is too hard, more than 500 presented a petition to Parliament in January urging the rules to be relaxed.
According to the capital’s bus operator Metlink, the future of about 45 Wellington bus drivers is currently unclear as they try to stay in the country.
Bus drivers applying for residency must score 6.5 in IELTS, a standard international test, or exceed equivalent scores in four other English-language exams.
That’s the same level as many universities require for post-graduate international students.
In a council meeting today, Greater Wellington regional council public transport committee chair Ros Connelly said she’s worried the settings will force drivers to leave the country.
“It’s an extremely high level that involves not only english language understanding, but also comprehension of quite difficult concepts, so this is the problem that we are in, it was misjudged how difficult it would be to get drivers across that threshold.”
Paul Tawharu, senior manager operations at Metlink, told councillors operators were “extremely confident” there was no risk to service, that they had good domestic recruitment plans, and were training people through the system well.
Tauwharu said operators are setting up schools within bus depots to help teach English, and using New Zealand drivers on long-term sick leave to help with other drivers’ language skills.
Connelly said she feared a shortage in two years’ time, when visa extensions run out.
If drivers sit the residency test now, and fail it, they can apply for a visa to stay in New Zealand for two more years, she said.
But if they fail again they’ll be gone.
“I have ongoing concerns that this just kicking the can down the road for another two years and that at the end of that period, they won’t be able to stay in New Zealand and we’ll be back to the situation we were.”
New Zealand was in the grip of a significant driver shortage in 2022 and 2023 which caused regular bus cancellations and suspensions.
In Wellington, in 2022, 59 Metlink weekday bus services were suspended due to a lack of drivers.
The Bus and Coach Association chief executive, Delaney Myers, said no one wants to return to those days.
“In Wellington that got as bad as sometimes almost half of all peak morning services being cancelled or running late, it was incredibly frustrating.
“And our concern is that if we don’t take a long term approach to how we’re going to secure drivers going forward, then we may be in that situation again.”
Myers said no one anticipated the level of difficulty the bus driver residency pathway required, when it was announced in 2022.
She said skilled bus drivers don’t need academic level English to do a good job, and she wanted the government to lower the requirements.
Auckland bus driver Ryan Jay Carumba, who’s from the Phillipines, said he tried sitting the residency test and failed, and is now on a 2-year visa extension.
Carumba said the test was difficult, requiring him to write a 300-word essay in one part of it.
He thinks the level is too high for what the job needs.
“For sure it’s too much for us, personally we do not communicate a lot with passengers, we say good morning, hi, hello, and then if the passengers have some concerns with us they just talk to us, maybe a bit.”
Carumba said seven of his Filipino colleagues have recently left Ritchies, the company he works for, because they couldn’t meet the visa-level English requirements.
Immigration Minister Erica Stanford said she was not considering relaxing the language settings.
She said the pathway had been established under the previous government, and bus drivers had always known it required a higher level of English.
“There is an expectation in New Zealand that people who are staying have a certain level of English, and they need to work to get that.
“I would also say there are hundreds of bus drivers who have met the English standard, who have worked hard, and who have met that standard.”
Stanford said she wasn’t worried about another bus driver shortage, because there were many bus drivers from many parts of the world who will be able to meet the English language requirements.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
