co-ordinated region

Pim Opinion

The world’s most over co-ordinated region

The only country in the South Pacific region with a landless middle class has a problem. Surprisingly, perhaps, the problem isn’t crime.

Indeed, the landless people themselves have no problem. Rather, the society in which they live has the problem, Fiji’s Indians, the descendants of indentured labourers, form the backbone of the country’s small business community. But, it seems, when they hire labour they tend to hire their own kind. So, presumably, do Fiji’s Melanesian businessmen.

The fact remains, however, that there are more Indian employers than there are Melanesian employers, thus Fijians find it increasingly difficult to find work.

Force bosses to be equal opportunity employers, suggests an East-West Centre researcher (page 16).

Force the banks to lend to more Fijian businessmen, he adds.

It s all been tried before which doesn’t necessarily mean that it shouldn’t be tried again. But the initiative to promote indigenous enterprise in the islands has to come from the indigenous people of the islands.

Several not enough have showed the way.

Without access to special treatment some have built businesses to rival the offshore giants. Most, if asked their secret of success, would cite a willingness to work extremely hard combined with a will to succeed. “At last we can believe in ourselves,” says Mr Wingti (page 18) and in that statement may be found the key to business development.

It won’t be found in studies, however academically sound, of business conditions in the island nations.

Seminars, workshops, discussion groups and informa

tion exchanges are all very well for those doing the discussing and the exchanging. All too infrequently, however, are the people under study present at these august gatherings.

The region has had just about all the "co-ordinating” it can take.

Indeed, Pacific islanders may well be the most studied people around today. There will be few universities in the world whose dust-shrouded shelves of doctoral theses do not contain at least one or two learned works on the South Pacific.

First it was the missionaries, then the explorers and the businessmen/opportunity seekers. Now, however, it’s the age of the researcher. The procession through the islands of anthropologists, sociologists, nutritionists, economists and whateverists seems never-ending.

Research opens up avenues for yet more research with dozens of agencies within the UN alone commis sioning studies of something or other before revealing to a breathless world, as did a recent UN report, that fishery resources are a vital to the island economies and need to be developed. Doubtless, the region’s planners are grateful for the tip.

On the other hand, the various studies may be useful to potential aid donors as a guide to where to spend their money.

But the problems facing the islands are generally well-known and understood. No amount of studying, co-ordinating or liaising is going to solve them.

And if the money spent on research over the years had been invested in indigenous industries, there would be no need for all the research and all the aid.