Shifting the burden of care of migrant workers’ children to extended families poses potential risks of child abuse.
Pacific Conference of Churches (PCC) General Secretary Reverend James Bhagwan said the responsibility and the protection of children needed to be taken seriously.
“Nowadays, we are seeing cases of child abuse from extended family members when children are left alone,” he said.
“So how do we ensure that those things are thought about, so it’s not just families saying, ‘oh, we can just leave the kids over there, or so-and-so will look after him’.
“We have cases of where child protection has failed, where there have been cases of child abuse and it’s not just with the cases of the PALM scheme, when we send our children from rural to urban areas to go to school and things like that, there are issues of human trafficking and other things that come up.”
He said churches and civil societies needed to also provide support to ensure the wellbeing of families, children and partners left behind.
“A lot of these issues are things that we need to look at our internal systems here in the Pacific, in the countries from which the workers are coming.
He said the UNICEF-led study on the impact of the PALM scheme on families in Fiji, Samoa,, Vanuatu and Solomon Islands underscored key points for churches and civil society organisations.
“The churches and other communities, civil society groups have been sort of reflecting on from anecdotal evidence, but now there is research that’s been done and because we live in extended family situations, our concern is always around the vulnerability of the children and the protection of children.
“Fiji is not new to this sort of migrant worker programs, remember we have been sending our soldiers to peacekeeping, similar situations, tour of duties, we have sports players, rugby in particular, who go and play overseas.
“Sometimes they take their families, sometimes they don’t, depending on the situation and so there are models that we can look at.”
He said the PCC also recognised the strong cultural and social rules that existed in communities.
“When people are taken out of that space, then who monitors how they behave.
“So we are thinking of perhaps this could be where the soqosoqo ni marama, soqosoqo ni turaga, the men’s and women’s fellowships can provide support within the community to those who are left behind.
“In the issue of things like maintenance and support, the report itself talks about how Fiji has that kind of, about when we send people to go and serve on tours of duty for peacekeeping, there is a contract there to ensure that remittances and money go to the families.”
