Briefs

Pago Pago tuna plant dodges the bullet HJ Heinz Company, the multi-billion-dol lar-a-year, world wide food concern, keeps threatening to move its 2500-worker tuna plant out of American Samoa, on the grounds that local taxes and wages are too high. (As a result it gets dozens of tax breaks from the poverty-stricken territorial government and has the lowest minimum wage under the US Flag.) But in March, when Heinz laid off sev eral thousand workers worldwide, closed one of its trademark ketchup plants, and cut back its weight-watcher programme all as a part of the firm’s largest retrench ment program in its history - the Pago

Pago plant was spared.

In fact, Heinz said that its cutbacks were aimed at concentrating the firm’s focus on its core products, including tuna.

So far, Heinz’s threats to close American Samoa’s largest factory have proved hollow.

The announcement of the cutbacks was made by Dr Anthony JF O’Reilly, Heinz chairman, who in a good year earns per sonally more than three times as much as all 2500 of his firm’s Samoan fish packers combined. His income, which has reached $U575,000,000 a year, also has exceeded the whole gross national product of some of the smaller nations of the Pacific (see Who’s making money? PIM March, 1992).

By David North

Western Samoan PM attacks man The prime minister of Western Samoa, Tofilau Eti Alesana, allegedly verbally abused and punched Mafutaga, a 20-year old man, about the head after a road acci dent, a Pacnews report said.

The 72-year-old prime minister allegedly turned violent after his vehicle smashed into the back of a pick-up truck, said Salu Toitua, Mafutaga’s father and the owner of the truck. However, Mafutaga’s family has decided not to press charges against the prime minister. The accident occurred outside Moototua National Hospital near Apia. Although both vehicles were exten sively damaged, there were no injuries.

Islands taken into classroom Pacific Passages, a 30-minute video on contemporary life in Pacific Island coun tries was completed in March and will be

used in Hawaii’s seventh grade, where stu dents are now required to study a semester of Pacific Island studies, Pacnews reported.

Caroline Yacoe, executive producer of Pacific Passages, said the video included footage of coming-of-age rituals in Papua New Guinea and funerals in Tonga. The narrator of the video, teenager Susan Hellerman, is a Pacific Islander-American.

Women's issues addressed for image Fiji intends to include an item on the role of women in Melanesia at the 11th Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) meeting to be held in Fiji this month, Pacnews reported Fiji’s minister for foreign affairs, Filipe Bole, last month said that if the matter could be achieved in the framework of MSG member countries, it would be a sig nal to the international community that Melanesia recognises the role of women.

ARU wants Pacific rugby team The Australian Rugby Union has called for a Pacific Islands team with players from Fiji, Tonga and Western Samoa to be intro duced in a Super 15 tournament, Pacnews reported from Canberra.

Officials of the present Super 12 Series are expected to meet this month to decide on adding two more teams to the tourna ment next season. ARU chief executive John O’Neill has suggested that the Super 12 be extended further to include a South Pacific team based in Auckland, New Zealand.

Australians may face jail over PNG crisis Some Australians could face jail for their involvement in Papua New Guinea’s abort ed Sandline mercenary operation, accord ing to a report carried in The Canberra Times last month.

An inquiry into the affair being con ducted in Port Moresby was expected to expose the involvement of several Australian businessmen in the recruitment of foreign mercenaries to allegedly deal with the country’s Bougainville crisis.

Earlier media reports stated that four Australian Vietnam veterans were among the mercenaries recruited by Sandline for the PNG government.

Electrification scheme may save Pacific Island coconut palms Coconut prices have sunk to all-time lows in recent years, forcing some governments in the region to abandon the traditional crop. But new technology being developed by the South Pacific Commission’s Rural Development unit to use coconut oil for rural electrification may get their economies fired up again. The system,

developed by Patrice Courty, a technology

adviser attached to the unit, says his objec tive is not to produce energy - “any stupid guy can do it” - but to design an integrated energy system where the people can add value to their produce in the village. He points out that most remote islands in the Pacific have just two products to sell - fish and coconuts. But for people to sell coconuts, they have to turn it to copra, which in turn needs government subsidies to survive, because it needs transport to export outlets.

“If they use this copra to produce ener gy, they don’t need these subsidies,” argues Courty. Courty’s dream of having a chain of remote Pacific Island communities pro ducing coconuts to fuel their own small electricity generators came a step closer in February, when the French government signed an agreement with the SPC worth 50,000 francs ($U595,000) to fund coconut fuel driven rural electrification projects in the Pacific.

By Kalinga Seneviratne

Fiji backs off PNG crisis The government of Fiji regards the situa tion in Papua New Guinea as the country’s internal matter and will not make a politi cal stand on it. Foreign Affairs permanent secretary Gyani Nand said this was despite bilateral agreements between the two countries. Fiji has a bilateral air services agreement, a bilateral trade agreement and a bilateral technical co-operation agree ment with PNG. Early this year, Fiji’s Foreign Affairs Minister Filipe Bole visit ed PNG where he met with the then Prime Minister Sir Julius Chan and the Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Kilroy Genia.

Nand said this was a goodwill visit which also included discussion on the prepara tions for the MSG hosted by Fiji from May 7 to 9. Again discussions focused largely on the MSG and bilateral issues.

By Bernadette Hussein