Solomon Islands Malaita Province reveals huge debt problems

Transcript

In Solomon Islands, the provincial government in Malaita says the repayment of more than 280,000 US dollars of other debts is the reason they have not been paying staff.

Provincial workers say they have not been paid for six weeks and some have sent their families back to their villages because they can no longer support them.

The provincial treasurer of Malaita, Francis Irosimae, spoke with Koroi Hawkins about the extent of the debt problems.

FRANCIS IROSIMAE: The management or the executive decided to make redundant 28 security officers and that requires redundancy payments which are quite huge. On top of that we had to repay workers National Provident Fund contributions from 2011, 2012 and half of 2013 deducted from employees and were never paid into their account. In addition the workers union demanded ten dollars per day back dated to 2010. And so all of those things we wanted to schedule but situation has arisen that we could not schedule them to ease the cash flow. We were demanded immediate settlement, we had no choice. And therefore we make those payments and as a result we drained out our reserves for paying salaries, fortnight salaries. In the end we have to find other sources to finance our salaries and we have come along quite well we only owe just two paydays but as of tomorrow we are going to pay all of them.

KOROI HAWKINS: Does that mean you have cleared all your debts and that you have a clear sailing ahead of you?

FI: Not quite so, its just this restructuring. We still have some more employees to retire. But I am referring to these NPF arrears and redundancies and retirement of long service benefits and that sort. But other creditors bills, they are still due and I am seeking for means to settle those payments, such as we want to sell a building so that we can settle those debts and then we get over them. But I am also looking at other favourable options so that we can settle past debts and we get over and have a clean book in the future.

Workers in the province have since confirmed that one of two outstanding salary payments has been made.