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Unions split over Samoa doctors' strike
If the former government doctors in Samoa were banking on trade union solidarity when they walked off their jobs last September, they were terribly mistaken.
During the more than two months long walkout, sympathy came from unexpected sources: concerned members of the community staged a march through Apia to call on the government of Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi to heed the protesting doctors' demands.
Tuilaepa did not budge. Instead, he issued an ultimatum in November: return to work or face immediate dismissal.
Doctors who live in government homes need to vacate them and those owing government money would be barred from leaving the country, the prime minister warned.
Late last month, some of the strikers complained about being barred from leaving the country. A PACNEWS dispatch says Tuilaepa wanted them to settle their bonds first before the ban was lifted. The doctors, most working in Apia's main public hospital, stayed defiant preferring instead to hand in their resignation en masse.
Local media reports put the number of doctors doing this at 27, as two consultants and a senior surgeon who were also on strike had by then taken up overseas postings.
Some of the 27 are working with Apia's private hospital while others now have their own practice. A few others may be moving offshore when allowed to.
If Tuilaepa's ultimatum was too harsh and bordered on trade union bashing, such an assessment was not forthcoming from other worker representatives in Samoa, or within the Pacific region.
In fact Samoa's largest trade union believes the doctors, members of the Samoa Medical Association, have only themselves to blame for the lack of trade union solidarity.
“When they began their protest, we were never informed,” Papali'i Solialofi told ISLANDS BUSINESS magazine.
“The doctors never asked us to help them with their negotiations, not even to help settle the dispute.
“The only information we have about their grievances were what we read and heard in the news media.”
Before the public march in support of the doctors, it was Papali'i who publicly questioned the motive of the protest, complaining that the strikers were putting their own interest before their patients.
She was, strangely, in support of the government's position.
In hindsight, the Samoa Public Servants Association (SPSA) boss felt the doctors adopted the wrong strategy in the protest, which did not help their cause. All channels of communication between them and their employer, the Public Service Commission and the Ministry of Health were severed when they walked off their jobs.
Refusing to talk or negotiate any longer, the doctors were content to use the local news media to highlight their demands, said Solialofi. The reason for this, she said, was something the SPSA had difficulty understanding.
Members of the Samoa Medical Association did not respond to questions sent by ISLANDS BUSINESS.
Samoa Medical Association president Dr Mauinu'uese Imo promised to respond to questions emailed to her. But she had not responded by time this edition went to press. Attempts to contact other association executives proved futile with most having their mobile telephones switched off.
But it ought to be noted that the doctors' grievances were not new. Since the beginning of last year, they had been seeking relief over what they said were ungodly working hours which forced most of them, due to manpower shortage, to work 24 hours a day or longer.
Their demands for overtime pay and for similar conditions offered to their expatriate colleagues from India and China were, according to the local doctors, left unresolved by the Public Service Commission.
Papali'i, who was later invited by the Samoa Government to serve on the commission of inquiry that looked into the doctors' grievances, was not impressed with the protestors' submissions.
“In demanding for pay increase, they were ignoring other important issues like their work standards, work ethics and their level of competency.
“I mean they argue that they work for more than 24 hours straight many times, but yet they have no proof of this.
“Simple work requirements of clocking in and clocking out to prove their hours of work daily were not followed.”
SPSA executive secretary Taupisi Faamau added that doctors got 90 percent of what they had demanded, so she could not understand why they continued with the strike.
“The only demand the government could not meet was the entry point salary they were wanting.
“They found the salary level offered was too little even though government gave all of us civil servants, including doctors, a 42% salary increase.”
The salary in dispute is the start-up for new doctors, which the Samoa Medical Association wanted pegged at S$30,000. Entry point salary for the rest of the civil service in Samoa is S$20,000.
FIJI
UNDP ready to help fight corruption
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) says it is ready to help Fiji establish an anti-corruption agency. Corruption has surfaced in Fiji as a worrying issue. The government says it will legislate anti-corruption laws, including whistle-blower protection laws, and create an anti-corruption commission.
Foster dies in Britain
Sir Robert Foster, a former British High Commissioner for the Western Pacific and later the last governor and first governor-general of Fiji, has died in Britain at the age of 92. As high commissioner, he was the chief resident colonial administrator for the Solomons Islands, Kiribati, Tuvalu and the British administration of the Anglo-French condominium of the New Hebrides, now Vanuatu. He was governor of Fiji at the time of independence in 1970 and was asked by the first Fiji Government to carry on as governor-general until his five-year appointment as governor expired in 1972.
GUAM
Governor Camacho to seek re-election
Governor Felix Camacho of Guam will seek re-election after the expiry of his present four-year term of office at the end of 2006. Because of quarrels with the current Lieutenant Governor, Kaleo Moyalan, he will have Senator Michael Cruz, a physician, as his running mate. Camacho says that Guam, a United States colony being built up by the United States as a forward military base for attacking Asian enemies, needs to keep its economic focus on the growth of tourism.
PAPUA NEW GUINEA
O'Neill supports open border trade
Papua New Guinea's opposition leader, Peter O'Neill, says he supports a government proposal for an open border trade agreement between PNG and Indonesia to enable people in the western province of PNG engage in trade with Indonesian-ruled West Papua. He says it's time PNG dropped “Indo-phobia” and adopt a more pro-active approach to Indonesia.
SAMOA
Matai to be banished if contest election
Samoan journalist Faumuina Lance Polu, a junior matai (chief), has been warned that he will be banished from his village if he persists on standing for election against MP Patea Satini, a more senior matai. The Samoa Observer reported that Satini told it that village chiefs had warned Faumuina not to breach custom by challenging a senior matai. Faumuina, publisher and editor of another newspaper, Le Samoa, is contesting Patea's claim that the village had made such a decision.
SOLOMON ISLANDS
Kemakeza refutes allegations
Solomon Islands Prime Minister Sir Allan Kemakeza has refuted allegations that he obtained more than S$800,000 (US$ 114,000) compensation for the loss of property during the political violence after a coup in 2000.
He was minister in charge of paying out compensation totalling US$20.7 million from a loan advanced by Taiwan, which is recognised by the Solomon Islands in defiance of China's 'One China' policy.
An audit report, published in December, said more than US$5 million from the Taiwan loan was not accounted for and that many compensation claims were excessive or false.
Kemakeza made a claim for damage to a small resort he owned on his home island of Savo. He said assessors had put the cost of damage at S$1.8 million, but his family was paid “only 800-something”.
The audit report, recommending that the police should investigate the claims, went to a former finance minister last year. When nothing was done about it, the auditor-general tabled it in parliament last month.
Diplomatic mission gets new home
After working from a rented office in Canberra for the past 10 years, the Solomon Islands diplomatic mission there will eventually move to a building constructed by the Solomon Islands government on a site offered by Australia.
TONGA
Tonga, Fiji fight over Minerva Reef
Tonga and Fiji are disputing ownership of the Minerva Reef, which lies between them and is mostly awashed at high tide.
Ownership of the reef would give the ability of one or the other of the countries to claim a larger exclusive economic zone (EEZ), meaning larger fisheries area.
Tonga made a formal claim to the reef, that at the time was recognised by Fiji, after an American entrepreneur said he would set up his own tax-free hedonistic state on it.
Fiji later realised that the reef could be leverage to enlarge its fishing zone.
The dispute will be settled, Fiji hopes, by a baseline survey to fix coordinates accepted by the International Seabed Authority. Fiji claims the reef lies within its 200-mile EEZ.
VANUATU
West Papua to be debated in February
Vanuatu's lone support for the independence of Indonesian-ruled West Papua is likely to be the subject of a parliamentary debate in February.
Opposition leader Serge Vohor in December introduced a motion that asked parliament to urge the government to bring up the West Papua independence cause at the United Nations. Prime Minister Ham Lini (pictured) supports the cause but said Vohor's motion needed to be reworded and dealt with at a February session.
Vanuatu is a member of the 16-member Pacific Islands Forum whose other members bowed to the wishes of two of their members, Australia and Papua New Guinea, for the Forum's recognition of what critics say is Indonesia's brutal occupation of the western half of New Guinea since it invaded it after the withdrawal of the former Dutch colonial administration in 1962.
Australia and PNG are anxious not to antagonise Indonesia.
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