Siva Kilari, 40, came to New Zealand from Tirupati, India, in 2002. A graduate of Loyola College in Chennai, his first part-time job here was picking asparagus on minimum wage at Feilding near Palmerston North, while studying automobile engineering. Now, almost 18 years later, he is the Director of Universal Granite (UC), New Zealand’s leading supplier of stones including marbles, granites, quartzite, soapstone, onyx and more.
A polymer science graduate, whose grandfather immigrated to New Zealand from Navsari, Gujarat, believes in doing whatever we can as a society, to make sports gear accessible to everyone, especially the youth of New Zealand society, and our Kiwi-Indian community.
Started on December 14 last year, Paanwala New Zealand, which in just under a year, is found in over 20 Indian restaurants and super-markets across Auckland, is looking to expand its footprint to the other two main centres in the new year.
Kush Bhargava, a naturopath by profession, who comes from Madhya Pradesh in India, has been leading the green homes revolution in New Zealand since 2010, when he established his company, the Wellington-based Eco Green Homes.
A Kiwi-Indian couple, who launched their food-delivery start-up Give Me Bread in Christchurch in 2017, have ventured into a New Zealand first.
An Alfajor is a soft biscuit-dulce de leche sandwich coated in a chocolate couverture. What is dulce de leche? It is the traditional South American caramel used for generations to create legendary recipes.
Sally Huapaya and Dr. Corin Storkey talk to Multicultural Times’ Katherine Tomaylla about Andean Maca, their business and how it helps promote the union of New Zealand and Peru.
A man who liquidated his company after being penalised nearly $430,000 for exploiting workers, has been made personally liable for the nearly $120,000 that’s still outstanding. The Employment Relations Authority (ERA) has ‘joined’ Jujhar Singh to his previous company Binde Enterprises Ltd, following a Labour Inspectorate investigation which uncovered nearly $210,000 in wages owed to 75 migrants working on a vegetable farm in the Bombay Hills.
Cultural Connections is currently running “Migrant Entrepreneurs in New Zealand” research, an initiative led by Auckland Regional Migrant Services (ARMS) in partnership with Auckland Council, and Immigration New Zealand. The purpose of this research is to help us better understand how migrants start their businesses and the challenges that they face. Migrants are defined as those who are born overseas but currently living in NZ.
The recently incorporated Canterbury Indian Community Centre Trust (CICCT) has started raising funds to make the dream of an Indian community centre in Christchurch a reality in the next two years. The Trust hit the ball rolling on April 8 in a specially organised ghazal and old Hindi melodious songs night, where the attendees were introduced to the objectives of CICCT by Ponnuram Venu Gopal, one of the its trustees.
Where would Christchurch be today without the assistance of the many thousand of workers who have contributed to the post-earthquake rebuild over the past six-and-a-half years? We sometimes hear complaints about the slow pace of progress repairing the roads and infrastructure, and building new structures - but how much more delay would there have been if people had not come to Christchurch from around the region, elsewhere in New Zealand and throughout the world to help? Yet - how often have we stopped to think about and recognise the contribution of these workers to our city? We owe them a great deal.
In conversation with Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi, National List MP
National List MP and Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister of Police, Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi, is encouraging the Indian community to name and shame those who are engaged in exploiting recent immigrants from India.
Immigration Minister Michael Woodhouse has announced new measures to stop employers who breach immigration and employment law from recruiting migrant workers, which will come into effect on April 1, 2017. This includes introducing stand-down periods during which time employers who flout the law will be banned from recruiting further migrant workers.
On February 2, Prime Minister announced that another 1125 police staff, including 880 sworn police officers, will be funded over the next four years to reduce crime and prevent reoffending. Also, the PM, noting the need to give ethnic communities a strong voice in the Government, has appointed several List MPs of ethnic origins as parliamentary private secretaries to assist ministers with ethnic communities and police portfolios.
The Labour Inspectorate has successfully applied to have ‘company officers’ made personally liable for $138,836 in arrears over the last month, after the companies went into liquidation. One case was when wife of a Nando’s franchisee, Corrado Ramada, was found liable in November for the $70,053 in arrears that the company owed in unpaid wages and holiday pay, when the company was liquidated and the director was declared bankrupt. Another case was of the Indian retail clothing stores Khoobsurat Collections/ Naari Collections.
The Employment Relations Authority (ERA) has ordered three owner-operators of Auckland Indian clothing retailers Khoobsurat Collections/Naari Collections Ltd to pay $60,000 for intimidating two of their previous employees. Both ex-employees were serving as witnesses in a Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment Labour Inspectorate investigation.
The case in question is the last month order by the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) awarding Kapilaben Patel, a migrant worker from Gujarat, India, $31,413.19 for unpaid wages, working on public holidays, and holiday pay; and a further $11,400 as reimbursement of the money paid in contravention of 12(A) of the Wages Protection Act.
Aiming to help migrants and first-time entrepreneurs fulfil their dream of running successful businesses, Massey University’s start up incubator – ecentre, and Aspire2 Group’s Ntec Tertiary Group, have come together to launch a part-time business start-up programme to be hosted at the New Enterprise Centre in Central Auckland.
We have an issue in New Zealand right now about immigration. Debates about immigration can easily turn into ones about race, religion and culture. That’s wrong and people who do that are rightly labelled racist or xenophobic. But we have to be able to have a sensible debate about how to respond to a rapidly growing population in a country that is struggling to keep up. We need to talk about how our immigration system works best for New Zealand and for the people who choose to work and settle here.
And once again as a proof of success of people of Indian origin, in whatever field they choose to in New Zealand, two Kiwi-Indians figure prominently in the top 10. While Auckland-based Dev Dhingra of The Fundmaster secured his second spot for the second year running, Christchurch-based Nathan Miglani of Loan Market was ranked sixth.