Pacific

Vanuatu opposition leader wants to drop foreign economic advisors

11:31 am on 1 May 2002

Vanuatu's opposition leader, Barak Sope, says his Melanesian Progressive Party wants to make the Comprehensive Reform Programme what he describes as more

Melanesian and no longer rely on foreign advisors.

Mr Sope says if his party is successful in tomorrows general election, it will continue to support the CRP but try to change it.

He has described the progamme's focus on good governance as hot air and adds that foreign advisors often make wrong assessments of what the country needs.

"When the CRP started in 1998 they said that by sacking a thousand civil servants the government would improve on its budget, but that's not true, they sacked over a thousand people, and the bill for Civil Servants is higher than what it was before the other area is that you see the delivery services in the rural areas, is not being carried out because out of the thousand that have been sacked, most of them were working building roads and working in the rural areas."

Barak Sope, the Vanuatu opposition leader