While reading the post of Pilipino Sa Kuwait regarding New Zealand opens 30,000 job opportunities for Filipinos just saw below comment that caught my attention,It came from certain Paul. I believe it is good to share this just to let you know what is life in New Zealand.
Comments :
To all those Filipinos wanting to come to NZ beware… but first a disclosure… I am a New Zealander born and bred. My wife is Filipino and we have been married for 31 years so I have no axe to grind with Filipinos in general. Certain individual Filipinos yes, but that is true across the board.
If you go to Christchurch for the rebuild, which by the way is now slowing down, you will need to find accommodation. Currently in Christchurch for a 3 bedroom home you will be looking at about $500 per week for rent. There have been stories in the newspaper fairly recently where 16 Filipinos were living in a 3 bedroom house. It was cold. It was damp. And a good proportion of the residents had health issues because of the sub standard housing. Filipinos are also being underpaid, forced to pay money out of their wages to “some” of the employers. As stated above the NZ minimum wage is $14.75 an hour so if working for minimum wage (most likely) then for a standard 40 hour week you would earn before tax $590 a week. That equates to $30680 per year and tax removed by the employer before you are paid would be $4389 leaving you with $26291 per year or $505.60 per week. You will need to pay your share of the rent, electricity, gas for cooking if the accommodation has it. Plus your individual costs for transport to and from work plus for shopping. Groceries could easily set you back $150 per week.
So, out of your $505 a week take away board costs of say $150, take away say $50 for transport, and $150 for food and other supermarket shopping. Add on say $50 for electricity costs and you are down to $55 left for entertainment, clothes (it gets very cold in Christchurch in winter), socialising with other Filipinos etc. And… you haven’t even sent any money home yet…
So you can see that it isn’t necessarily a wonderful opportunity.
And we also have a sizeable unemployment sector here as well. And believe me a lot of people will not be happy at Filipinos, or other non NZer’s, coming here and taking away job opportunities. Racism is definitely still alive and well in NZ, with Christchurch being the most racist area in NZ, unfortunately.
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