Overseas workers who have not seen home for up to 18 months are seeking assurances they can return to New Zealand if they pay family a flying visit.

Pacific Island workers at Vailima Orchard in Hope, south of Nelson are in the midst of their harvest season, putting in long hours to meet the fruit demand for their employers as well as earning money for their communities back home.

Lolohea Huni is one of the many workers who come to New Zealand each year to earn a living as part of the Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme.

Back home on Tonga’s main island Tongatapu, he would have been a delivery driver for a fraction of the money he is making at Vailima’s Hope orchard.

Covid-19 has kept him in New Zealand since March last year. Some on the scheme have spent up to 18 months away from home.

Seeing his wife and five-year-old son Ma’afu on Skype each day is the closest Huni has to quality family time, something that the 29-year-old finds tough.

“Every time I talk with them, my son asks me ‘when are you going to come home?’... [but] working here makes a very big difference.

When New Zealand’s border was closed in March last year, there were 10,989 RSE workers in the country.

Currently, there are around 7,300 RSE workers in New Zealand.

This included those still onshore from the previous RSE season and another 2,011 who were part of a border exception group approved in November.

As of February, around 4,600 RSE workers from last year’s intake have returned home.

Those who have stayed have largely kept working on the orchards. The normal cycle has a group arriving in October to help with thinning leading into harvest and leaving in April, with a second group working from February to September.

Vailima’s Matthew Hoddy said with 75 million apples exported each season, the value of the seasonal labour was essential to the family-run operation.

Hoddy said about 70 per cent of his workers were married with children. Many wanted to go home, but wanted some reassurance they would be able to come back to the orchard next season.

“It’s really hard, the extra time these guys have had to put in, but they have to weigh up the income they get [here] while there’s very little income coming in for their communities.

“If they’re lucky enough to have a job at home they can make 80 dollars a week, or they can make that amount working here inside four hours.

“They are missing out on their children growing up – six months is do-able but after 18 months it’s pushing it.”

“Whatever’s got to happen has to be without the two weeks at either end – because that’s another month Lolohea won’t have with his family.”

Hoddy said the workers’ respective governments had been generally proactive in helping with repatriation.

However, the bulk of Nelson’s Tongan RSE workforce had struggled to get a seat home with only limited capacity for people to go back to Tonga each fortnight.

An Immigration NZ spokeswoman said RSE workers already in New Zealand could choose to stay and work or return home if flights were available.

If RSE workers chose to return home, they would need a new visa to re-enter New Zealand that complied with current border restrictions.

During a visit to Vailima orchard National’s immigration spokesperson Erica Stanford and Nelson List MP Nick Smith called for specific provision for Pacific RSE workers to see their families.

“We do need to be cautious of people travelling from higher risk countries where Covid-19 remains widespread, but for Covid-free countries in the Pacific, we should be more flexible,” Standford said.

“We need a solution that will enable them to return home after the current harvest and to give them priority to be able to safely return for the next crop.”

Smith said he had spoken with many who were hugely distressed by being separated from their families and young children for so long. It was affecting their mental health and wellbeing.

Smith said National strongly supported last year’s “blunt” lockdown and closed borders to control Covid.

However, a “smarter and more sophisticated approach” was now required which either involved reserving an allocation of space in New Zealand MIQ facilities or establishing a Pacific bubble with countries that are Covid-free, such as Tonga.