Whispers
Whispers
What are USP students up to? Tickling the till, especially the public service till, is a sore point of contention around the Pacific Islands.
What’s the answer? Perhaps better education, or university education, hopefully to indelibly influence the recipients with attitudes concerning service and integrity, etc. But perhaps the university is where the black sheep of the region are introduced to the art of misappropriation.
- ADVERTISEMENT -
This year, the University of the South Pacific Students’ Association (USPSA) collected more than F$345,000 in mandatory student subscriptions of F$31 per semester. The latest edition of the USP students’ newspaper, Wansolwara reports that the USPSA auditors complain that they always have difficulties with the association’s book.
The current committee wrote off F$30,000 in bad debts out of the F$63,000 their predecessors couldn’t account for. Wansolwara wailed in an editorial: “The offenders got away scot-free, and the situation does not bode well for an institution grooming leaders of tomorrow.”
Meanwhile, there are complaints about a decision by USPSA officials to bump up allowances for themselves by 100 percent without the approval of the USP Council.
The president collects F$200 a fortnight and treasurer, secretary and vice-president each get F$180.
Family life top priority: A drawback for Pacific Islands countries like Kiribati and Tuvalu that train large numbers of men for jobs aboard foreign ships is the social impact on family life caused by the long months that seamen are abroad.
Officers are typically away for five to six months and crew often for nine to 12 months. Broken families and the introduction of diseases, particularly now of HIV-AIDS, are some of the costs.
Britain has just supplied F$2.4 million towards the Pacific Islands Seafarers Training Project. Some of the money is being used to “focus on increased awareness of seafarers on their social responsibilities” by impressing on them that absence presents “many significant social issues”.
For wives and to a lesser extent other family members, according to the Pacific Community’s Regional Maritime Programme, that means having to “shoulder all family responsibilities, leading to a heavier workload, greater stress with potential negative impact on health.”
It's going up, not down: Niue residents have numerous worries about their future, but at least they can be assured on one point. Unlike some of Oceania’s other islands, Niue is unlikely to be overwhelmed by the rising of the sea. University of the South Pacific scientist Patrick Nunn told a science meeting in September that the 256-square kilometre coral slab that is Niue has risen during the past 500,000 years by an average of 0.09 to 0.14 millimetres a year. And in another 500,000 years Niueans can count on having a home 40 to 70 metres higher than it is now. Isn’t that a relief?
Police scam bust flops: It must be some kind of a region’s record. The police force of which country has publicly declared that it knows the immigration department is rotten with passport sales rackets, but has completely flopped in its effort to bust the business? Answer: Fiji. The Fiji Times, quoting an anonymous (for its safety) source, reported that alien Chinese were making pay-offs of F$1000 to F$2000 and up to F$20,000 for passport stamps and passports. The police told a parliamentary commission: “Our investigations could not get to the root of the kind of crimes that were perpetrated by people outside and the staff within the Immigration Department.” Police estimate there are about 2000, mostly illegal Chinese immigrants, running around in Fiji.
No parrot fish please: Are all Pacific Islands beaches vanishing due to erosion or climate change? Believe it or not, lots of beaches are substantially formed by the excretions of parrot fish, so experts who say they know, say. The fish nibble away at corals and several thousands years of their droppings build up as part of the sand visitors bask on. But parrotfish are a favourite target for the cooking pot. Their numbers are nowadays sadly depleted. So no parrot fish, no excretion, no beach.
Conserving tuna stock: The Pacific Islands Forum meeting in August mentioned its desire to conserve high seas tuna stock since some species are being depleted quicker than was previously suspected. The Forum hopes to persuade fishing fleets to use nets with larger mesh sizes so that small fry can escape to become big fry instead of being dumped back into the sea dead. One regional fisheries expert says big meshes won’t work because as a net full of fish is dragged in for boarding the mesh closes up to snag all fish big and small. Actually, says our source the bycatch loss rate is probably an exaggerated one and not nearly as important as it is being made out to be. A more effective but controversial conservation means would be for Western Pacific governments to ban fishing around FADs (fish aggregation devices) which is what has happened in the Eastern Pacific fishery.
No respect, no business: Welcome to American Samoa, but not necessarily if you are a foreign businessman. Local chiefs have restored a 30-year-old ban on the opening of businesses in their villages by foreigners because, they say, foreigners show little or no respect for village rules.
Disclosure banned: Ten months into the year and the French Polynesian government still hasn’t published its 2002 tourist figures. In September, Tahiti-Pacifique magazine asked the Tourism Department to find out what’s happening for publication in its October edition. Reply: “We have the year’s figures through to July this year, but we are also prohibited from releasing them. Everything is blocked by the minister,” the magazine reported, referring to Tourism Minister Brigitte Vanizette.
Tahiti-Pacifique magazine concluded: “In French Polynesia, we only transmit ‘good figures’, the others we hide! Completely illegal!” French Polynesia had 227,658 visitors in 2001, 10% down on the estimated 252,200 record in 2000. The 2000 figure had to be an estimate because nearly 14% of the forms distributed to arriving aircraft weren’t collected. So a figure was estimated based on the 1999 figures.
Qarase lays down the rule: What does one Solomon Islands Prime Minister and one Fiji Prime Minister have in common? Like the Solomon Islands prime minister, Sir Allan Kemakeza, some of whose ministers are engaged in stables of relationships, Laisenia Qarase, is trying to rein in certain of his cabinet ministers from indulging in romantic liaisons.
Some of the Romeos are not too discrete about their adventures. Qarase is said to have issued a memorandum that mentions old-fashioned morals and told his ministers to at least publicly appear to be bound by them.
Prison chief behind bars: Richard Sikani began a six-month jail sentence in Port Moresby jail in October for contempt of court. His time behind bars could be somewhat embarrassing for him since, as Correctional Service Commissioner, he is head of the prison service. Judge Bernard Sakora said Sikani had deliberately and wilfully ignored a court order for the reinstatement of another prison officer.
Fiji TV monopoly: When is deregulation not quite so? When it is controlled regulation. This is how Fiji Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase put it when telling parliament that Fiji Television, which last year agreed to give up a 12-year monopoly in return for being allowed to accept booze advertisements, would remain a monopoly (and keep its booze advertisements) because the government wouldn’t accept any applications for commercial TV licences.
The rather profitable TV company has a Fijian-owned company, Yasana Holdings, as its controlling interest shareholder. Qarase was its first chairman.
One reason for its earlier profitability is the extreme lack of local programmes, which it says, would be too costly to produce. Instead, viewers are fed a heavy diet of plastic mainly American soapies.
Shipping embarrassment: Does anyone know where Tonga can get its hands on Papadopoulous Pelopidos? He ran the Tongan shipping registry from an office in Greece as an outfit that Tonga closed down in embarrassment after a couple of old Tonga-flagged tubs were caught floating around the Mediterranean loaded with arms in one case and in another Pakistani gentlemen said to enjoy terrorism organisation links. Police Minister Clive Edwards told parliament the government is anxious to recover more than US$300,000 in registry fees Mr Pelopidos appeared to have left Tonga’s employment with.
Army horror: Samoans rely on a force of about 300 police constables and strong customary village discipline for its domestic security.
The whisper is that in the not too distant past Prime Minister Tuilaepa Malielegaoi reacted with horror to a proposition for an army.
Perhaps that was because of his recollection of some of the past military manoeuvres, not to say machinations of the armies of Fiji and Papua New Guinea, not to mention the antics of Vanuatu’s paramilitary police mobile force.
Then there’s Tonga’s small army, which nowadays engages in war games with visiting secretive military hit men from the United States. You could call the Tongan force an army of royalists, which is something the country’s pro-democracy movement needs to keep in mind.
Life in the Solomons: As the crow flies, it’s just over 40 very rugged kilometres from Honiara across Guadalcanal to the nearly roadless Weathercoast.
In October, a mother and father from the Weathercoast arrived in Honiara aboard a ship to have their month-old triplets vaccinated.
It was the first ship to visit their area for three years, Anseta and Roneo Tangi explained. “We have a clinic, but it was closed because there were no medicines,” they said.
The triplets arrived in bouncing fine form. Now the family waits for another boat back to their lonely village. Perhaps for another three years?
