‘Wealthy’ Nanaksar gurdwara in Auckland focus of multiple migrants claims

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By Steve Kilgallon | Stuff | New Zealand |

A wealthy Auckland Sikh temple demanded money and unpaid labour in return for visas and encouraged migrants to work illegally, multiple Indian migrants have alleged.

The Manurewa Nanaksar gurdwara, boasting assets of over $25 million, has had 328 temporary and residency visas approved since 2006, with another 60 declined.

Immigration New Zealand said the majority of those declines were due to “concerns about a genuine purpose for travel to New Zealand, as well as concerns over the organisation’s compliance with employment and immigration law”.

Immigration New Zealand confirmed it had an active investigation into complaints relating to the temple but said it couldn’t provide details as that might “impact the integrity of the investigation”.

INZ compliance boss Steve Vaughan said while he couldn’t discuss current investigations, “we take all these allegations seriously and encourage people to come forward with information”.

Unpaid trustee Ranbir Singh Sandhu said he was co-operating fully with INZ and said the complaints all related to the tenure of former chairman Rajwinder Singh.

Rajwinder Singh declined to comment, and his lawyer, Lester Cordwell, said: “There is no comment with respect to these allegations”.

Stuff has spoken to six of those temple-sponsored applicants, who all alleged senior temple officials had broken immigration law, and all said they had been persuaded to sign blank sheets of paper before coming to New Zealand, and that agreements were later added without their knowledge to those pages.

All six named an Indian temple official, Paramjit Singh Lally, as the man who had asked them to sign the papers, made arrangements at the Indian end and demanded the fees.

Before terminating a phone call, Lally said the allegations were “complete nonsense. Ask them why they are saying this?” He did not respond before deadline to written questions.

Four complainants said they were charged sums of up to $21,000 in return for promises of residence visas which never eventuated.

They said while the temple had brought them in ostensibly to work for the temple trust itself, they instead found work in farming or fruit picking.

Two more complainants say they face a civil case in the Indian courts after the temple claimed they had agreed to work for six months unpaid in the temple’s main gurdwara in Delhi.

Stuff reported in May about an Employment Relations Authority case brought by a former volunteer priest at the temple, Indian national Tarsem Singh, who alleges the temple secured him a false passport, and made him work unpaid as a general handyman, claims the temple deny.

A former temple volunteer, Iqbal Singh, has approached Stuff saying he witnessed Tarsem Singh at work, recalling him painting a ceiling at 10pm one night and doing maintenance work on the temple’s kindergartens and says Tarsem was “sold a false dream” by officials. Ranbir Sandhu said he didn’t know Iqbal and the temple maintained its stance on Tarsem Singh, which was to deny all his claims, pointing to their documented use of professional tradesmen.

Read the gfull story, ‘Investigation as migrants complain about treatment by wealthy temple’ (Stuff, 3 Aug 2021), here.

RELATED STORY:

NZ gurdwara to pay N$104,000 for breaching employment laws – Report (Asia Samachar, 31 Oct 2019)

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