APIA – An outspoken businesswoman, Moe Lei Sam, has lashed out at Samoa’s Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sa’ilele Malielegaoi over the state of the country.

“Samoa is in a mess,” she said. “I see poverty everyday when I look outside the window.

More and more young children are resorting to a life of begging on the streets,” she said.

“Our women and young girls are not safe out there, because rapists and murderers are walking around freely when they should be in jail.”

The 64-year-old Lei Sam contacted the Samoa Observer to express her concerns, after reading a story titled Dangerous fugitives on the run on the newspaper’s front page.

“Where is the government? What are they doing about this?” she asked.

“Where is the Prime Minister?” Lei Sam asked. “This is his time. It is his responsibility to lead his administration to clean up Samoa.”

“Our people are afraid, our women are scared and at times like this, we look to our leaders and yet we don’t know where they are.”

Having lived in Samoa all her life, Lei Sam said the crime rate in Samoa has never been “this bad”.

“This has never happened before,” she said. “People are no longer scared to kill each other. There is so much theft, there are robberies, rape and all sorts of vile crimes. It’s scary and as a Samoan, I’m scared. I think so many other women share the same feeling.”

Lei Sam said the prime minister was wasting so much time on “useless things”.

“I think the prime minister is too busy pulling other people down and he has neglected his job of dealing with issues that are worrying our people.”

“Take, for example, how he ridiculed the former Miss Samoa who has gone to the Miss World. What did she do wrong? She didn’t deserve to be put down like that but that’s what our prime minister did.”

“ I think he should concentrate on dealing with the real issues instead of wasting our time with these other petty issues.”

Lei Sam said “poverty” is a real issue in Samoa.

“My heart sinks every time I look out the window and I see these kids running around at all hours of the day selling stuff. That tells me that our people are so poor and there is so much poverty in Samoa.”

“Many of them are nine and eight-year-olds. It’s heartbreaking.”

She told of an incident last week where two young girls approached her at her shop.

“I looked down and I saw that the pineapples they were selling were bigger than this kid’s head. I became so sad. This is what the future will be like for Samoa.”

“So my question again is that, where is our prime minister? What are they doing about these things?”

“Our ancestors fought for our country to be independent because they wanted a brighter future for our people,” she said. “They would not have envisioned what is going on today. Samoa is in danger now and we have to do something about it.”

The Samoa Observer reported that it was not possible to obtain a comment from Prime Minister Tuilaepa as he is leading the Samoan delegation to the Paris COP 21 meeting in France.

The website of the Asia Development Bank says Samoa is culturally rich but is relatively poor in financial terms.

About one fourth of the 180,000 people in the country survive below the national poverty line.

It reports 26.9 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line with 39 per cent of the population aged 15 years and above is employed.

More than one third of Samoans work overseas due to limited jobs at home.

- Samoa Observer/PNC