Siosi Mafi, the Governor of the National Reserve Bank of Tonga. Nuku'alofa, 17 April 2013.

Although Tonga lacks real statistics on the economic cost of domestic violence, the cost of the crime to the country is huge. Awareness is the key, and it is not easy to estimate the cost of family violence unless we all come out and talk about it, Siosi Mafi, the Governor of the National Reserve Bank of Tonga said on April 17.

In Tonga's closest neighbour FIji their cost of family violence was estimated at nearly FJ$500 million in 2011, which is more than half Tonga's GDP. Australia recorded $13 billion in 2011, while New Zealand's cost of family violence was $1.2 billion in 2012.

"It is frightening and I would not like see what would be the cost here. But we need someone who is interested in this issue to collate all the information on all different sectors and departments and put together an estimate for Tonga. We need to continue to work together to come up with a way to measure the cost of family violence in Tonga," Siosi said.

Determining the cost

Speaking to a workshop on "Upskilling Journalists and Advocates on Reporting Domestic Violence" held at the Basilica in Nuku'alofa, she said family violence is a problem in Tonga, which needs to be recognized so that something can be done about it.

The Governor spoke on 'Determining the Economic Cost of Family Violence in Tonga'. She said she found the topic a challenge and apologized that they could not find anyone who had put in an effort to collate or to estimate the costs. "But I am happy to speak not just in my capacity, but as a woman, and although it is a difficult topic, awareness is the key to how we can work together in determining the cost of violence in Tonga."

She said there are few channels that cost could be measured in Tonga like looking into the cost in the different sectors of health, justice, social services, education, businesses and in households. Each sector would know better their cost from family violence, but there were also a lot of cost implications.

Healthcare 

Siosi said in health there is the cost of short term and long term health care in the hospital or clinics, the cost on families at home, emergency services, people working in the hospital, mental health services, paramedic and physiotherapists. In addition is the cost of all the people who are looking after the victims.

For justice there is the penal cost, jail time, time away from home, court preparation, the judges, jury cost, forensic services and legal fees are huge. "We have heard that some victims do not seek legal advice because they can't afford it. The costs from justice system to deal with family violence are quite large," she said.

Siosi said there is the impact of cost on Non-Government Organizations who face the challenge of accessing financial resources to be able to carry out their work. Tonga has constraints in terms of its resources.

Children

For the education sector, there is the cost of providing training and awareness programs with special education for women and children who witness violence. It is not just the training of teachers or the equipment needed but also the cost on children who lose focus in the classroom because they are affected by violence at home, she said.

She said the cost on employment of people losing work due to violence, which can impact government revenue because we will have less productivity for the economy. Less economic activity would mean less trading.

"Once government's tax collection drops they would not be able to fix the roads, among other things, and the flow on effect is quite large and this is a cost that will affect everyone. For personal and household cost income earnings can drop due to being absent from work, the need for counseling and legal fees due to violence are costs we need to be aware of," she said.

Siosi said talking about the issue improves awareness, which will not only help Tonga realize the cost indication but perhaps minimize it.

"We can all appreciate it is not easy to estimate the cost of family violence unless we all come out and talk about it. The cases that have been reported I am sure is just a very small percentage of what is really going on out there. This workshop and engaging the media is a great idea because the media plays a very vital role in this awareness program."

Lack of data

One of the participants commented that Tonga needs to collect the data on cost because that would provide particularly government with the right information to make strong policies, while informing the people of the real situation.

Siosi said it is indeed a challenge that could be picked up by government. "We have a Statistics Department that has the legal power to go out and collect the data. If we believe this is important enough there should be resources provided to collect the data from everyone," she said.

A participant asked whether she thought the penalty for first offence under the new proposed Famly Protecton Bill of $2,000 or imprisonment of 1 year was feasible considering the economic status and the average household earning in Tonga, and whether it was significant considering that one in three women gets beaten up.

"It depends on the perspective that you look at. From the perpetrator's perspective the economic situation and financial difficulty of $2,000 sounds high, but if you are looking at it from a preventative perspective as something that should reflect the seriousness of the offence, I think $2,000 is too low," she said.

Another participant suggested that instead of taking the penalty money from the family, that offenders should be made to do high-profile community service to work off the penalty. "We have a lot of rubbish along our roads, and offenders could be made to wear bright t-shirts and pick-up rubbish every day where we can all see them."

Economy

The Governor said Tonga's economy was suffering from a huge loss of remittances from overseas Tongas supporting their families here. From 2008 to early this year, over $100 million pa'anga is missing from the economy, in terms of remittances. 

Economic growth was an average 3% during 2008-10 due to investment in the reconstruction of Nuku'alofa that included roads, the hospital and wharf.

However, since the reconstruction was completed there was less economic activity, and the IMF reported that growth had slowed down to 0.8% in 2011-12. "Tonga has still not recovered from the adverse impact of the global financial crisis, especially since we rely a lot on remittances from family abroad," she said.

"The loss of remittances impacts us directly because we cannot buy the things we want which in turn affects the businesses and government because there would be less importation of goods due to having no money to demand for the goods, causing a drop in our importation, which results in a drop of government revenue in terms of the sales tax collected from the wharf."

She said a drop in Tonga's exports like squash is also not helping the state of the economy.

"We need to be be aware of what is going and we should not rely on and think the remittances would continue to flow into Tonga, but we need to adjust to the real situation. We need to either find other industries or avenues that can generate the money that we used to get through remittances, or adjust to the little we have now," she warned.