Wellington, June 24 – A Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries carve-up is to leave 30 staff without jobs.
The first of the redundant staff go on July 1 and others will go when their contracts end. Most of the cuts hit administration and support staff, including secretarial and accounting workers. Some regional managers also get the axe.
MAF is being split into the Ministry of Fisheries and the Ministry of Agriculture. The Ministry of Agriculture will retain the MAF slogan so it remains identifiable to international traders. The department’s research will be taken over by the National Institute of Water and Atmosphere.
Change manager Patricia Kelly said about 480 of the ministry’s 2900 staff were affected by the change. Most were in the Wellington head office.
Some staff would only get new job titles, while others’ roles had changed significantly. Where this happened staff could be retrained, or could apply for different jobs.
Mrs Kelly said a large number of staff opted for retraining, which minimised redundancies, but some staff had yet to decide. Until this was done it was not known how many redundancies there would be.
Almost 500 staff had been moved to the new Ministry of Fisheries. Some had transferred to Niwa and about 50 would be employed by the Ministry of Agriculture.
No functions would be cut under the restructuring, but the Ministry of Fisheries would be charging for more of its services.
The split was aimed at providing a more efficient service and it could save money, Mrs Kelly said.
In future more of the ministries’ functions could be contracted out.
NZPA WEP ps 24/06/95 11-41NZ
