Transcript
MIKE HENRY: It [the Authority] has no regulated authority, it has no legal status, it has a collection of Crown assets wwhich are managed by the Cook Islands Investment Corporation on behalf of the Crown. In 2005 the Investment Corporation delegated that authority to some individuals on Aitutaki, and formed, for want of a better term, a board, that operated on a day to day basis with the management the assets of the power supply in the interests of the wider community and specifically the people of Aitutaki.
DON WISEMAN: At least some of the board members that have been removed are saying that it is all about the national government getting access to the funds that have been accumulated and they say that those funds belong to the people of Aitutaki.
MH: There are two points to that. Firstly, I will answer your question previously as to why the board was removed at this time, why the delegation of authority was withdrawn, the Aitutaki Power Board, as it has been, had a number of projects that they wanted to get going. But because of how the finances and the board has been treated by the central agencies of the Ministry of Finance, they have been unable to take the action to purchase major generators, there is a list of things that are needed on the island of Aitutaki to keep the power station operating efficiently and they haven't been able to undertake those. Those constraints aren't with the Investment Corporation. The Investment Corporation under its Act as the ability to spend those. There is confusion on how Aitutaki has been treated by the Ministry of Finance and how it should be treated as an extension of the Cook Islands Investment Corporation is what we are working to clear up now.
So the simplest way to do that was to remove the delegated authority, bring it back under the main board of the Investment Corporation, put in place all the procedures and policies that the Ministry of Finance recognise and allowing the Aitutaki Power Station to operate, effectively as a state owned enterprise, and actually manage its own affairs.
In respect to the question of whether the CIIC has any intention to take the money away from the power station, there are two points there. The first one is, under its authority [the CIIC] has always had the ability to do this. It didn't have to remove a board to do it. It's a delegated authority,, so the authority to do that has always been with the Cook Islands Investment Corporation. The facts of the matter are that the Corporation has no intention to do this. Like previous chairman Allan Mills, we, the Cook Islands Investment Corporation, we believe that the funds generated in Aitutaki need to stay in Aitutaki and be used to benefit the people of Aitutaki. There is no question about that and there is no intention to change that. The ability to use those funds has to be put in place. Unfortunately when the previous board was installed they were not given any terms of reference, they weren't given clear policies to be able to follow these actions, and this is where things are at today. The intention now is to put in place the policies, put in place the terms of reference and the clear methods for being able to take normal actions that you would as a board and operate efficiently.
DW: In terms of this machinery that's needed there, that they haven't been able to buy, have they got enough money, now that it's freed up, to buuy that machinery.
MH: Absolutely. The power board has been operating, to the best of their ability, very well actually. And in the last 3 years as you know, worldwide the price of fuel has dropped and in Rarotonga this was reflected in the tariffs that the consumer was paying. In Aitutaki the tariffs haven't changed in many years and the difference in those tariffs has been able to be banked away so that the power station can then implement these extra purchases that are needed. There are things like we need an additional stand by generator, we need three additional substations, we need to complete the ringmains of 11,000 kilavolts, all of these things. At the moment we are putting underground all of our low voltage lines so that homes aren't connected above ground, which means in a cyclone event we don't have the powerlines down and the loss of power that you would
have on many Pacific islands. So the maintenance is less, but this costs money, and those funds have been saved but they just haven't been expended. Well actions have been taken already. The start of those actions has been taken and over the next weeks, yeah not very long, and in a very short period of time, the things wanted to have been done will be completed.
