Thieves steal and crash cars from driving school for refugees and migrants

Thursday, 12 August 2021

People steal cars from driving school for refugee women learning to drive to help get jobs and drop their kids to school. (First published November 8, 2021)

Stolen cars from a driving school in central Auckland are now undriveable, stopping migrants and refugees learning how to drive.

Security video shows two cars were stolen from the Migrant Action Trust’s Puketapapa Community Driving School in Sandringham, central Auckland.

The cars were stolen by a group of people who crashed them into each other and drove in circles while being filmed.

Many migrants and refugees want to get their licence so they can drive to work or drop their kids off, said Amie Maga, manager of Migrant Action Trust’s community driving school. Others need a licence so they can get a job and afford a car.

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Amie Maga, manager of Migrant Action Trust’s community driving school, and volunteer instructor Ross Hunt.

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The damage on one of the driver training vehicles.

“We set it up for the high demand for young people, migrants and former refugees to get more affordable, migrant-friendly and culturally sensitive driver training,” she said.

“As a social enterprise, we get the full-paying customers, then we use all the income to offer subsidised lessons for the refugees who can’t afford the full cost of a driving lesson.”

Maga said the main clients are refugee and migrant mothers who are “urgent referrals” from the health board, English Language Partners, Refugees and Survivors New Zealand and the Umma Trust.

The mothers are often learning to drive so they can drop off and pick up their children who have special needs or disabilities from school, or to help them get a job.

“Refugee communities don’t have a car [to learn in], they don’t have a friend to support them or supervise,” said Maga.

“Most of them need interpreters, so they rely on our community driving programme to help them.”

Migrant Action Trust owns Puketapapa Community Driving School which gives refugees free driving lessons.

For migrant and single mother to three kids Najwa Natsheh, the driving school “helped me a lot”.

Natsheh couldn’t afford a car and needed someone to teach her how to drive, as dropping her three kids to school through public transport was “hard” for her.

“I have twins. It wasn’t easy for me to get on the bus with their double pram,” she said.

Kegin Alwines, a refugee from Sri Lanka, used the driving school as she can’t afford a car until she gets a job. She is now set to sit her restricted driving test later in August and hopes to find work soon after.

“If I don’t have driving licence, I have missed the chance to get a job,” she said.

Alwines said she feels sad the vehicle she was going to use for her test was the one of the stolen and damaged cars.

Classes are free for refugees who can’t afford driving lessons – Alwines said she “can’t afford” one-hour classes with organisations like the AA.

Migrant Action Trust’s driving school teaches more than 300 drivers every year. But, because the damaged cars are currently undriveable, Maga has had to postpone bookings for 50 people who were set to have lessons and exams in the next few weeks.

The two cars, a Toyota East and a Holden Spark, were donated.

Maga has opened up a Givealittle page to help cover the costs and get new driver training cars.