Dear Editor – Malaita Province, and perhaps all the other provinces, have similar problems.
Rundown townships, poor planning, poor offices, and residential buildings in ruin, un-plan road network with potholes, no tar seal, dusty roads, overcrowded hospitals with deteriorating conditions, rundown clinics with no drugs or medicine, unreliable electricity, overcrowded secondary/community high schools with no conducive learning environment, and the list goes on….
No major economic development, no fisheries facilities, no markets for agriculture, livestock and fisheries products, no hotel and proper accommodation for tourism in the provinces, no proper shipping, and facilities, unemployment on the increase, no paid work opportunities, can’t afford to pay school fees, medicare, the list goes on,
All the provinces are asking the same question: when shall we see prosperity and feel the real impact of the much talked about economic development?
Let me say this.
Real physical changes can only be possible and achieved if we have enough finances at our disposal to implement our development aspirations and needs.
So where are all aid donors’ money gone?
Where have they invested their millions of dollars in aid assistance?
Where have we dumped these aid money?
Are these Aid funds sufficient enough to address the country’s socio-economic needs as highlighted above?
What’s next?
Continue with this piecemeal type of assistance?
If these traditional friends Aid money are not adequate to absorb all our infrastructure and economic needs of the whole country, why can’t we allow the Sogavare government, through his Minster of Finance, together with all his economists and debt Management advisors to seriously scrutinize, analyse and conceptualize the US$100 billion loan and perhaps come up with a workable formula or strategy/concept that is feasible, viable and achievable?
They have yet to show us their analytical assessment of the US$100 billion loan, but we started barking as something is grossly wrong.
But sometimes a dog barks because it is hungry therefore it needs something to eat, so are we not hungry for better road infrastructures, tar sealed, better universities, better colleges, better schools, better hospitals, clinics, village aid post, better homes, better power systems, better water supplies and sanitations, better wharfs and bridges, better ships, better investments, more crops/food production, more export, more job opportunities, better pay?
The list goes on and on.
Folks we are now in the twenty-first century, the world is changing and we must move on and in search of a better way forward there should be a way out, so why not bring on the US$100 billion?
After all, it offers the lowest interest rate ever and over our normal traditional lenders, and if it can revolutionise our country’s development aspirations and fulfill our needs.
So what, let’s give them (Government) a try, after all, I don’t think whoever is lending the money will ever sell our country.
Henry Star Dora
Honiara
