Richard Kempthorne: Rural Support's Top of the South chair on beneficiaries helping with flood clean up in Tasman and Marlborough

The Rural Support Trust believes beneficiaries will make a difference to the flooding clean-up in the upper South Island.

The Government's activated a beneficiary task force in Tasman and Marlborough, to support those affected by severe weather.

Tasman has 600 work-ready beneficiaries.

Rural Support's Top of the South chair, Richard Kempthorne told Andrew Dickens the initiative's worked well before.

He doesn't know what happens if people are physically and mentally capable and refuse to do the work.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So those are on a job seeker benefit of being
sent to Tasman and Marlboro districts to deal with the
cleanup after the floods will be paid to do things
like clear debris and repair buildings and waterways. And Richard
Kempthorne is the chairperson at the Rural Support Trust for
the Top of the South Island. He's also the former
mayor of the Tasman District and he's up this morning.
Good morning to hear Richard.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Yeah, good morning.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
You love this, eh, I.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Don't know about love it, but yeah, it's the enhanced
tustle screen does a great job.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
Yeah, all right, So this enhancement, this scheme has been
in place before. Does it work. Do people come?

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Yes, they do. It works really well. It has to
they select suitable people because this is pretty tough work,
really clearing debris and slush from fences in particular, and
you've got to have people that are physically capable and
it is quite hard work. But they do a great job.

(01:00):
We have had them before and they've been active in
other districts and they do a really good job and
they're very much appreciated.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
So they're selected. Are they then compelled or do they
have to volunteer.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
I'm not sure about compelling, but certainly if you've got
people that are physically and mentally capable to do the
work and don't do it, I'm not sure what happens there.
But I don't you know, we're talking about eighteen to
twenty people out of Motorweka Richmond Nelson, So I don't
think it's going to be difficult finding people who are
prepared to and want to do the work.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
So they're coming from the district. They're not being trucked
in from Canterbury or elsewhere.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
No, they're from the district.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
And many of these guys would be like job workers
who have already lost their jobs because of the floods.
They would have probably already been working to clean up anyway,
but here they are getting a little bit of compensation
for it.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
Well, I'm not sure that they've lost jobs. I don't
know there's been a lot of job losses because of
the flood. In fact, probably the people that have jobs
have been pretty busy. But these would be people that
aren't normally working, but they've been brought into work. So
one of the outcomes of this is once they've finished
doing this, they often find jobs in other areas or

(02:18):
sometimes they end up working on farms, so it's quite
a good outcome.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
Great, So what do you need to do? I mean,
where are we at with the cleanup?

Speaker 2 (02:27):
The cleanup is starting, so we've had a lot of
volunteers within the district so far that they've done a
lot of helping on properties, but there's still a lot
to do. We've also got a group called tasks Kiwi.
These are often retired or semi retired people from the

(02:49):
services or emergency services and there at the moment and
they've just started work yesterday, so there's a twenty of
them having a look around the place. They're using our
surveys that we've done. We've done about one hundred and
twenty so far of properties that need long term help

(03:11):
cleaning up, so they're already there. But this group of
enthanced Task Force screen they'll be starting in three to
four weeks time.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
Fantastic And is the Student Volunteer Army still there.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
I'm not sure they have been there, but I don't
know if they're still there.

Speaker 1 (03:27):
Great stuff. It's lovely to see the community getting together
to fix the place up and I thank you for
your time today, Richard, all the very very best of.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
Luck, our pleasure. Thanks very much for more from Early
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