Right to health: barriers in access to health services 91. A temporary work visa holder in Aotearoa New Zealand can access publicly funded health services only if they are eligible to be here for two years or more. However, RSE contracts are usually for a period of 7 to 11 months. Accordingly, workers are not entitled to publicly funded health services. 92. Workers must pay for private health insurance while working under the RSE scheme. The RSE employer organises the health insurance prior to arrival and the cost is deducted from their pay. Workers have no choice in provider, policy type, and cannot negotiate the matter. Workers are generally charged set premiums without correlation to the state of their health or previous history. 93. Many workers that the Commission spoke to had not received any information about their health insurance policy, despite their premiums being regularly deducted from their pay. Without documentation, it was not clear to some workers whether they had health insurance at all. 94. Further, many workers face difficulty in accessing their health insurance, explained further below. One health practitioner that the Commission spoke to, who has reported on the health needs of seasonal workers,62 told us that most workers were in poor health and that their health needs were not being looked after. Pastoral care 95. Under the RSE scheme, employers must appoint pastoral care providers for their workers to ensure their wellbeing. Many workers that we spoke to expressed concern that pastoral care providers were often absent or did not act in the interests of the workers. We were also told that some appointed pastoral care providers were friends or relatives of the employers who acted more like workplace supervisors, rather than independent advisers. Access to justice 96. Like many others on temporary work visas, RSE workers are on visas that tie their employment to one employer. If the employer terminates the employment, they no longer have a legal right to remain in New Zealand. Even if the termination is unlawful, workers felt that they would not be able to dispute the termination. Accordingly, many workers feared losing their employment or having their visas cancelled if they raised any issues relating to their employment. Workers were also concerned that the employer might threaten their reemployment for future seasons with other employers. 97. The ILO Multilateral Framework on Labour Migration – a set of non-binding principles and guidelines for a rights-based approach to labour migration – provides that effective remedies must be provided to all migrant workers for violation of their rights by creating effective and accessible channels to lodge complaints and seek remedies without discrimination, intimidation, or retaliation.63 98. ILO General Principles and Operational Guidelines for Fair Recruitment states that governments should take steps to ensure workers have access to grievance and other dispute resolution mechanisms, to address alleged abuses and fraudulent practices in recruitment, without fear of retaliatory measures including blacklisting, detention or deportation, irrespective of their presence or legal status in the State, and to appropriate and effective remedies where abuses have occurred.64 62 Lisa Blaker, Identifying the health needs of seasonal workers from the Pacific, Kai Tiaki: Nursing New Zealand (Vol 25, Issue 8) 2019. 63 ILO Multilateral Framework on Labour Migration, principle 10 at p 20. https://www.unhcr.org/50aa5cc59.pdf 65 General principles and operational guidelines for fair recruitment and Definition of recruitment fees and related costs (2019) at part 1(III), para. 8. 19