Government offended by Kiri

bati stories

I WRITE to register the Kiribati

government’s most serious disappoint

ment with your magazine’s Special Report on Tarawa and Kiribati in your July 1999 issue. We were particularly offended by four articles entitled: “Tarawa’s main islet in appalling state’’,

“Kiribati tourism future looks bleak,”

Second radio station on Kiribati closed”, and “China sets up ‘spy’ station on Bon riki.” With all due respect to the author, government is of the opinion that the articles are far from being fair and factu al.

The author seems to have a pre-set perception about the government and people of Kiribati and was out to collect only what suits his perception. In the course of his information-gathering exer cise, he ends up with incorrect figures and data about Kiribati simply because he was relying almost entirely on sources that are not official.

It is regrettable that he has not done what is expected of any good journalist in a reputable magazine of giving the other side a chance to be heard. It is now necessary for government to provide the other side of the story, rather belatedly, in the hope that this could be published in your next issue.

It is regretted that a reputable maga zine has to be associated with comments and views that are totally disrespectful of Kiribati as a country and as a people, let alone their inaccuracies. Had the author made the time to see the relevant offices of government, he would have been pro vided with the following information, viz.- On “Tarawa’s main islet in appalling state”: 1. The problem of littering and beach contamination on Betio and South Tarawa is not as bad as reported and there are measures being put in place to try and improve the situation. Such mea sures include (a) the resolution of prob lems associated with squatting; (b) a government loan of 5DR7,271,000 equivalent to about AS 15 million for, among other things, the upgrading and extension of the sewerage system to include most households on South Tarawa and Betio; (c) the enacting of new legislation called the Environmental Act dealing with pollution and contami nation of the environment; and (d) social and economic programmes designed to make outer island life better so as to

counter the urban drift; 2. The population of Betio is 12,497 according to the 1995 census, not 28,000 as reported. In fact the reported figure is close to the combined census figure for both Betio and South Tarawa. 3. The author’s description of Betio “having great piles of human excre ment everywhere” and the Betio people having “no sewerage” and “living straight on the hard packed dirt” is not true at all. Of the 12,000 people, there are about 2,000 people or 240 house holds which are regarded as squatters and a large majority of these house holds have no proper toilet facilities or not connected with the main sewerage system which is functioning properly for the remaining 10,000 people on Betio; 3. It is not true that the Kiribati trust fund or the Revenue Equalisation Reserve Fund (RERF), as we call it, “has around 145 million pounds ster ling sitting in the Hong Kong and

Shanghai Bank”.

At the end of last year, the Fund had a value of about Ass7o million, not sit ting in the HSBC but held in the cus tody of State Street, while invested on our behalf by two management groups namely the HSBC and the Nikkam in accordance with the general guidelines set by the RERF committee which is chaired by the minister of finance.

The Ass7o million is equivalent to 228 million pounds sterling, not the 145 wrongly reported by the author; 5. The ruthlessness of the secondary entrance examination and selection referred to by the author is less true now than five years back as govern ment has embarked on a programme aimed at universal and free junior sec ondary school education throughout Kiribati that would do away with the secondary entrance examination.

On the employment side, govern ment has a vigorous programme of catalysing industrial and commercial developments for employment or income generating purposes. Currently

there are about 8,000 persons employed in full-time jobs and this means that one out of every ten I-Kiribati (from young to old) is employed; 6. Kiribati takes a very tough and firm approach in its negotiations with distant water fishing nations. Last year about $42 million was collected for fishing access fees, representing about 80 per cent of the 1998 budget; 7. There is no truth in the author’s comment that “a government decision last year not to allow freight aircraft into Bonriki Airport has limited the prospects for making much more” money from the fisheries.

In fact, the government was most keen to allow the air-freighter run between Tarawa and Australia but the operators of the service have not sub mitted a formal application for reasons that are not clear to the government, but most probably due to the apparent lack

of freight from Tarawa.

Government, being aware of the cur rent constraints, will, through its Devel opment Bank, be pushing for more investments in the fisheries sector geared for the high grade sashimi market in Japan using the air freighter service men tioned. At the same time, the two nation al fishing companies, Te Mautari Ltd and Outer Is Project, are undergoing a merg er exercise with a view to turn them into a more dynamic fish processor and exporter of high quality fish to Australia, Honolulu and Japan; 8. There are about 1700 I-Kiribati men employed as seafarers by the Ger man shipping companies, over 200 on Japanese fishing vessels and less on Korean vessels bringing back over $lO million in remittances.

The Kiribati seafarers on the German vessels in the past 30 years, since the inception of the seamanship programme

in the mid-sixties, know very well that they cannot be on equal pay as their European and Asian counterparts for the reason that they cost more in terms of their training to which the ship owners, through their South Pacific Marine Ser vices (SPMS) agency, contribute as well as in their recruitment and repatriation arrangements given the long distance travels involved between Kiribati and Europe and the isolation of Kiribati from the most economic airline routes.

However the Kiribati government does encourage both the German employers and the I-Kiribati seafarers through the SPMS and the Kiribati Over seas Seamen Union (KIOSU) to work together towards fair play based on hard economic and commercial facts so that whatever terms of employment and con ditions are agreed upon from time to time

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are fair and reasonable to both sides and are sustainable in the long run for the mutual benefit of the two sides; 9. Kiribati has no great desire to push the Japanese or anyone else to turn Kiritimati island into a major space port in the next millennium but it has welcomed the great interest of NASDA to use Kiritimati for such pur poses. The government is not blindly nor passionately rushing into the deal but cautiously examining the costs and benefits to Kiribati to ensure that the deal is fair and reasonable to both sides, both in the short and long run.

The same applies for the proposed 100-room Japanese-built hotel which Mitsubishi is negotiating in conjunc tion with the NASDA space project.

If these proposals do not materialise that is not the end of life or develop ment for Kiritimati island. Govern ment has other strategies in the pipeline for the economic development of the island should the NASDA pro ject fail to eventuate; On “Kiribati’s tourism future looks bleak”: 1. To say “that Kiribati tourism is pretty hopeless” is an insult to the gov ernment and people’s investment effort in the tourism business.

The government and the people of Kiribati believe that the problems cur

rently inhibiting the development of

tourism can be overcome and there are plans to address each one of them. It is only a matter of time before the Kiri bati people are capable of solving the problems mentioned in the articles; 2. The tourism that is most suitable for Kiribati is “the home stay tourism” - the kind of tourism that enables an overseas visitor to interact with the people at the family and village level.

This will require a lot of training and awareness for those village people who wish to play host to tourists so that the tourists have their basic needs met and have the opportunity to enjoy

our peaceful and communal way of life while, at the same time, our people can leam from their guests new ideas or skills for the betterment of their subsistence way of life; On “Second radio station on Kiribati closed”: Government believes in the cre ation of more radio stations and newspa pers to provide more variety and choices to the people but at the same time, there are media laws in Kiribati that every per son regardless of status must obey. The importation of radio equipment into Kiri bati and the establishment and operating of a radio station are governed by the Telecommunication Act 1983 that was assented to by the person complainant referred to in the article when he was

president.

The Act requires that a person must obtain an importation licence before he can import radio equipment into Kiribati and must obtain an operating licence before he can operate a radio station.

The station was ordered by the Telecommunication Authority not to go ahead with its broadcast as it was found that no importation licence had been obtained and the operational licence could not be issued until the question of importation licence has been resolved and the telecommunication regulations which were required under the principal Act for the regulating of radio licences had been formulated.

The radio station may proceed once it has cleared itself of the breach on the importation licence and has been proper ly licensed under the newly formulated regulations which model on the Newspa per Act and the Broadcasting and Publi cations Authority Act to ensure that the rights of both a media operator and any person likely to be affected by the action of the operator are equally safeguarded.

In any alleged breach of the law, the police are normally involved in the inves tigation exercise and this has to be car ried out in this case. The police were also asked to assist when the radio station refused to comply with the notice of the Telecommunication Authority to cease

transmission. The negative views expressed about government’s handling of the matter are well known in Kiribati as opposition views to which the pre sent government has duly responded and issued a clarification during the past two meetings of parliament to the satisfaction of the people of Kiribati.

On “China sets up ‘spy’ station at Bonriki’’: 1. The station is not located at Bonriki but at Temaiku village; 2. The government of Kiribati does not consider the building of an extrava gant looking embassy building and a space tracking telemetry and command station at Temaiku as China playing a sophisticated or strange game in Kiri bati.

While the Chinese government is the more appropriate body to respond to this comment, the Kiribati understand ing of the matter is that the Chinese embassy building in the Marshall Islands and in many other countries have the same design as the one built here in Tarawa and they usually look large because the same building or premises cater for both office space and living quarters for embassy staff.

As far as the station at Temaiku is concerned, Clause 2 of Article One of the agreement between the government of Kiribati and the government of the PRC explicitly states that “that the TT&C station is an integral part of China’s space TT&C station network for launch support for satellite and launch vehicles.

The Chinese government agrees that the TT&C station be used entirely for peaceful purposes and will not at any time be used for military purposes.”

The underlined sentence was not included in the China proposed draft but was one of the many changes that the Kiribati government introduced to the initial draft text proposed by the Chinese side during the 12 month-long negotiations between the two sides from September 1995 to September 1996. Any breach of this automatically leads to the termination of the agree

ment as stated in clause 3 of Article Eight. The other important insertions form the Kiribati side are the seven clauses under Article Two of the Agree ment which brings all the operating equipment and frequencies or telecom munication activities of the station under the supervision and control of the Telecommunication Act 1983.

The other safety clause that the gov ernment of Kiribati has inserted is Clause 4 of Article 8 which says that ‘This agreement shall be automatically terminated without the requirement of any party to give notice if either party breaks off diplomatic relations with the other party.” 3. There is nothing in the agreement to stop the government or the people of Kiribati from visiting the station but it is appreciated that the station cannot function efficiently and effectively if the entire area is left open for anyone to

enter at any time given the very critical tasks expected of the equipment in the launching of satellites. The need for pri vacy and restricted entry is therefore understandable and anyone wanting to visit the station is expected to have the courtesy of seeking permission in the way one would if he or she wants to visit a private home or office.

In fact, during the past three years, many people including overseas digni taries and technical experts have visited the station on arrangements made with the Chinese Embassy. Despite all these, the appropriate officers of the Telecom munication Authority have the power to go into the station at any time for any alleged breach of the Telecommunication Act by virtue of Article Two if the agree ment. 4. Had the author consulted the appro priate authorities of government, he would have been informed of the tough

negotiations that the Kiribati govern ment undertook to modify the Chi nese proposal into something fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable to both sides. The comment of the author that “the size of the deal with China was not known” is false as it is a well known fact that the govern ment of Kiribati struck a deal with China, as shown in the agreement, that the latter should pay an annual land lease airspace rental to the gov ernment of Kiribati - in the sum of $200,000 with a five per cent infla tion increase for each subsequent year for the first five-year period, followed by a review of rental and other fees for the sixth and subsequent years.

It took about one year of careful negotiations for the Kiribati govern ment to convince the Chinese govern-

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ment to abandon its original offer in the initial agreement draft to provide Kiri bati with a television station in exchange for a free lease and to accept the Kiribati counter-proposal of an annual lease payment. 5. The tar-sealing of the road lead ing to the station is not part of the agreement but it was a request from the Kiribati government which was raised during the opening ceremony of the

station. At the time, the mud surface on the road was seriously ruined by heavy rain and flooding that it was becoming a serious communication problem for the people living in the area and the Chinese staff at the station.

Due to the delay in the road equip ment’s return from the outer islands and the late arrival of new equipment from China, the road was not started until mid-1998. The comment that “the Chinese a week before polling, tar sealed the road between the airport and

its base” is therefore not correct; 6. The government of Kiribati has a duty to honour and comply with the terms of the agreement as expected of the Chinese side and to also bring to the notice of the latter anything that may constitute a breach of the agree ment on the part of the latter and if the matter cannot be solved amicably then the agreement may be terminated.

The author’s conclusion that the sta-

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tion is a spy station simply because “they have a discreet little place that they do not like people visiting” and also because “of the two satellite track ing dishes are aimed” may strike read ers who have not visited the station nor seen a copy of the agreement or those who are technically illiterate to be the greatest revelation of the century. How

ever, the technical experts of govern ment and other from outside who have double checked the technical assess ment of our own experts have not in the last three years made any finding to suspect that the agreement has been breached by the station and for the ter mination clause to be invoked.

Now that our people have just recovered from similar rumours that

were spread by opposition factions last year before the last election, it is regret table that the Pacific Islands Monthly decided to revive what our people refer to as the anti-China phantom story.

Rikiaua Takeke,

Press Liaison Officer (Ag.), Office of the Beretitenti, Government of Kiribati