Job cuts: Proposal for 79 roles to go at airports, ports

Seventy-nine New Zealand Customs jobs are proposed to go at airports and ports around the country.

According to the Public Service Association (PSA), these workers from teams such as boarder operations, intelligence and compliance service delivery.

The PSA said a further 41 roles were proposed to be axed from the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA).

These included workers from teams dealing with child exploitation, money laundering and counter terrorism.

PSA assistant secretary Fleur Fitzsimons said the cuts were irresponsible and dangerous.

“It has taken years for successive governments and our Customs Officers to set up our internationally renowned border management. These cuts will harm New Zealand for years to come.”

Fitzsimons said the false promise of ‘no cuts to the frontline’ had again been exposed with these proposed cuts.

“These are the very people whose job it is to be exposed to some of the most vile and traumatising material imaginable and those who control our long borders as a last line of defence on behalf of us all.

“What could be more frontline?”

A total of 33 Customs staff have accepted voluntary redundancy or early retirement. The service was considering further options to meet the required savings, including reviewing existing vacancies, it said.

DIA has announced a first round of job cuts – with 28 jobs set to go at the National Library and its Māori Strategy and Performance team as part of cost cutting measures.

Meanwhile, it has confirmed the vast majority of the more than 400 staff working on the previous government’s national water reform will be gone by end of the month.