Solomons government defends decision to bring in external forces
The Solomon Islands' Minister of Foreign Affairs and External Trade Jeremiah Manele has defended the government's stand to invite regional forces from Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and Fiji to restore law and order in the country.
New Zealand Defence Force and Police personnel are heading to Honiara, Solomon Islands. Photo: NZ Defence Force
This was after Member of Parliament for East Honiara, Peter Kenilorea Junior questioned the implication of the foreign forces on the country's sovereignty.
But Mr Manele said as a responsible government, they believed and felt this was necessary to protect further lives being lost and properties being damaged.
He told parliament the government had to act and request for support.
Bodies of 63 unclaimed people buried
The bodies of 54 adults and nine children were buried in a mass grave in the PNG capital Port Moresby after they were left "unclaimed" in the city's General Hospital's mortuary for six months.
Hospital medical services director Dr Kone Sobi says 250 bodies have been kept in the mortuary since March because no-one had come to claim them.
Dr Sobi said mass burials are not the Melanesian way of sending off the dead, and is also expensive for the hospital to carry out.
He said there's been an increase in the number of bodies brought to the mortuary each day during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Tongan return flights not till January 18 at earliest
Tongans stranded overseas will have to wait until at least January 18 for repatriation flights.
A government official has told Matangi Tonga flights from Australia, Vanuatu, Fiji and possibly Samoa have been confirmed tentatively for that date.
A repatriation flight from New Zealand is pencilled in for January 20.
Last month hundreds of Tongan seasonal workers, stranded in New Zealand, pleaded to be allowed to get home before Christmas.
But the Ministry of Internal Affairs chief executive Fotu Fisiiahi, said the government can only bring them home when it is safe to do so, and it's not ready to do that.
He said their primary concern remained keeping Covid-19 out of Tonga, and that there was no way Tonga could extend its current quarantine capacity beyond 300 people.
Meanwhile, 96 percent of Tonga's eligible population has now received the first dose of the vaccine; 71 percent are fully vaccinated.
Tuilaepa concerned about plane lease cancellation
Samoa's opposition leader Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi has voiced concern at the government's decision to cancel a lease on a Samoa Airways Boeing 737-800 aircraft.
He said he is concerned about how easy it was for the FAST government to cancel the lease and incur 180 million tālā in penalty costs.
Tuilaepa blames FAST's reliance on the advice of former Attorney-General Taulapapa Brenda Heather-Latu.
The senior lawyer said in a report that the leasing of the plane breached company rules because it was insolvent.
In announcing the cancellation of the lease last week, Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata'afa said the company was bankrupt and the best thing to do was to cancel the lease and look at a full audit of it's operations.
Tuilaepa said he wants to know where the government is going to find the money to pay off the cancelled aircraft lease.
He added that if FAST has failed to deliver on their $1million tālā per constituency promise then he does not know where they will find the $180m tālā needed.