Kiwis fund Tongan house repairs
New Zealand taxpayers are funding repairs to 300 stormdamaged homes in Tonga after the Pacific country was struck by Cyclone Gita in February.
It was described as the worst storm to hit Tonga in about six decades.
Melino Maka, a leader of Auckland’s Tongan community, says he has struggled to access information about aspects of the work being done to repair damaged homes in Tonga.
Maka says he has been contacted by about 20 people in Tonga who have questions about the efforts and he has tried unsuccessfully through various channels to get them answers.
‘‘When people don’t get information they start to speculate.
‘‘Where are they at with it [the work]? What is the criteria for those people who are eligible ... and is it full or half repair?’’
Maka, who chairs the Tongan Advisory Council, was among the people who joined Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on her ‘‘Pacific reset’’ tour of the region in March.
He was also at a Habitat for Humanity event in Flat Bush, south Auckland, in April when the charity launched a campaign to assist with long-term recovery efforts in Tonga and Samoa following the destruction caused by Gita. Maka says he told Habitat’s then-chief executive Claire Szabo, who is now on leave, that Auckland’s Tongan community needed to be part of the work so they can ‘‘take ownership’’ of it.
‘‘I said we need to get some processes [in place] around the 300 houses [being repaired] and the criteria for [choosing] who you are going to help, and are you going to have a lottery [to choose whose repaired]?’’
Maka’s comments come in the wake of radio host Heather du Plessis-allan saying on-air that Pacific countries are ‘‘nothing but leeches on us [New homes are Zealand]’’. She later clarified her remarks, saying she ‘‘was talking about the Pacific Islands and the people who run it’’.
In response, Stuff journalist Andy Fyers reported New Zealand spent millions in the Pacific annually, but this country ‘‘has strategic goals it wants to achieve by spending the cash ... so it funds a number of social and economic programmes aimed at improving living conditions in the Pacific’’.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) says the New Zealand Government provided Tonga with a $10 million recovery support package following Gita.
More than $4.5m was to support Tonga’s disaster recovery framework.
Caritas NZ director Julianne Hickey says the Tongan Government assessed more than 2000