Social Development Minister Louise Upston says the two new sanctions being introduced for beneficiaries are practical and will help improve their chances of finding a job.<\/p>\n
Upston said, from tomorrow, anyone failing an obligation for the first time must either do a minimum of three job-search activities every week, or attend one or more employment-related training courses.<\/p>\n
This follows two other sanctions introduced earlier this year as part of the Traffic Light System, which put half of a benefit on a payment card or required community work experience for those who failed to meet what was considered their obligations.<\/p>\n
RNZ reported in March\u00a0that government data showed beneficiaries sanctioned with money management cards were often unable to pay rent, putting them at risk of homelessness.<\/p>\n
The sanctions were considered an alternative to harsher options, Upston said.<\/p>\n
“One of the things that we committed to was to introduce non-financial sanctions as an alternative to somebody having their benefit reduced in half, or suspended or cancelled as the final, kind of, steps.<\/p>\n
“What we do want to see is people taking the steps that they are obligated to take to prepare for work. There is no sanction for someone who cant find a job.<\/p>\n
“We do expect them to be taking steps to look for and find a job, though.”<\/p>\n
No other sanctions were planned at this stage, Upston added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Social Development Minister Louise Upston says the two new sanctions being introduced for beneficiaries are practical and will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87978,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-87977","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}