Dear Editor,
I wish to drop in a few words now, here, and then, hopefully it would help improve our economy as a whole.
First of all, I wish to thank the PRs, the PSA, and the so called Tonga National Business Association (TNBA) for help crippling our small economy. Only if we sit down and think carefully of who we are, what we are doing, and how it would affect others and our very small economy, some light would have been came through to save us all time, money, and especially our beautiful faces.
My initial proposal this time is very simple:
1) PRs, please go back and do what you do best: Digging up all corruptions within our government, including Royals and Nobles, and make them public. But this time, please give them to the Solicitor General for further investigations before charging them within our court of law. We now have to learn to trust each other. Leave gossiping to the "lalanga & koka'anga ladies", it is for the purpose of their motivations.
2) PSA, please understand that you are the employee, not the employer. And most importantly, you are to serve the interest of the public as a whole. Now, our Princess Regent has given you what you wanted. But your services has gone down to almost ground zero. What happened? I am one of the biggest Tax Payers in Tonga, and I supported your strike at first only for that simple reason, with a big hope that you all would upgrade your services after. If most of you claim to be very well educated individuals, you should simply understand the real basic of life. Truly, I am very saddened.
3) TNBA, firstly, please register your organisation with Ministry of Labor & Commerce before using the name Tonga and National. And please stop saying you are representing the local businesses, because you are not. We locals are all very ashamed of what you had done to the Tonga Chamber of Commerce (TCC). TCC has always been the catalyst of our economy, and we have a very good Tongan President. We need to grow up and respect each other. The Chinese are now capitalising and taking advantage of our shortfalls, only because we have diverted our attention away from our core daily businesses.
Secondly, we local business people should stay focus on what we do best: Beat the Chinese in business, make some profits, generate more employments, pay taxes, and most importantly pay our bills.
4) Government & PM Office: It would be nice, after complete briefing with all departments concerned, for Lopeti Senituli to directly answer all allegations came by at the right place and at the right time. This will avoid and help minimize public confusions.
And most importantly, work closely with the Private Sector. Immediately develop new Policies to encourage local businesses to keep growing, upgrade services, and able to compete. Your current policies right now are very frustrating and confusing.
Set up a Public Export Corporation to deal directly with exporting of any local exportable items, from foods to handicrafts, and encourage Tongans overseas to become shareholders, for they are the only potential market. This Project will not only boost and stimulate our local supply & demand, but together with our current foreign remittances, help top up a few dollars into our foreign reserve, and that is our immediate Saviour.
Our island country is a Constitutional Monarchy. Meaning, no one is above the LAW (Constitution). Each Sector in every Society has its own function to perform. If we stick only to where we belong and perform accordingly, I promised our economy will revive almost immediately.
Cheers for Now,
Sione Maile
sulu [dot] tonga [at] gmail [dot] com
