No more drug testing for tradies training

Stuff reports:

One of the country’s largest training institutes is understood to be ditching a mandatory drug testing regime, over claims it’s seen as a “barrier to education”.

The Bay of Plenty-based technology institute had trumpeted its mandatory tests, at a time when former Prime Minister Bill English was lamenting high levels of drug-use among young workers.

But now, with National out of government and mandatory drug-testing out of favour, Toi Ohomai Institute of Technology has quietly ditched the drug tests.

National’s tertiary education spokesman Paul Goldsmith warned that it was impossible to keep workers safe in high-risk industries without drug-testing.

Generally, he said, it should be up to education institutes whether they introduced mandatory drug testing. “However in high risk courses like construction or forestry, it’s important that everyone is able to exercise judgment and show responsibility so you’d expect that everyone is drug free and the only way to know that for sure is by testing.”

Toi Ohomai was formed from the merger of Rotorua’s Waiariki Institute of Technology  and Bay of Plenty Polytechnic last year. Its trades department teaches carpentry, electrical, engineering, automotive and collision repair.

Mother-of-two Katherine Page was a Level 3 carpentry student this year, and is firmly in favour of the test. “You need to be able to trust your fellow students and make sure they’re fully alert,” she cautions. “Because it could impact your life, not just theirs, if they’re on drugs.”

I suspect a motivating factor here is the free fees policy. Every tertiary institute around will be trying to sign up as many students as possible, so they maximise their revenue. When students had to pay even a small portion of the cost of their training, they would be discerning. But now it will be open slather.