LOCAL farmers and fishermen coming in from the provinces to sell their produce and catch are calling on the responsible authorities to remove the two ship wreckage in front of the Central market and repair the wharves for proper use.
The call was made through the Solomon Star North West Guadalcanal Stringer John Toki following what many farmers claimed as additional expenses on transport hiring from the main wharf to the Central Market.
The two ships known as M.V Bikoi 11 and M.V Yandina have been washed ashore by strong winds and have been for the past years without nothing being done by responsible authorities to remove them.
Speaking on behalf of the farmers, Tito Laqana from Savo told Mr Toki that farmers from Russel islands, Ngella, Savo, Malaita and other provinces have spent a lot of money to bring their products to the Honiara only to meet additional charges for truck hiring.
Laqana said the wreckage should be removed as it also put a bad image in front of the Central Market with all of its rusts and will also cause pollution with its leaked fuel tank.
He said they would like to have their products offloaded straight at the market to avoid other extra spending.
He added the responsible authorities including those who owned the vessels should work alongside responsible authorities to remove the wreckage.
Laqana said this is not a new call but because responsible authorities failed to do their job.
Over the past years, former Member of Parliament for Aoke Langalanga Mathew Wale also questioned the legal framework as the number of wreckage increases without anything has been done to address them.
Mr Wale said the increasing number of wreckage in Honiara sea fronts alone really calls for clarification in terms of legal framework to control and manage such situations.
He said most of the wreckage has been there idle with no direct attention to actually deal with them by removing them from where they are.
He added one of the example is the one mentioned above which has now been used for public toilet and also disallows the jetty for its intended purpose.
“There’s seems to be no responsibility by the owners of those vessels to do anything about them,” he said.
Wale said even though the legal right was with the receiver of wrecks, in some way there should be responsibility by the owners or some understanding where if others removes it then the owners have to pay for that rather than just allowing the wreckage to just lying all over the places.
By IAN M.KAUKUI
