Dear Editor, nothing comes for free!

Businesses here charge high prices because the sales tax of goods and services is high – it is exactly the same as NZ 15 per cent who already charge high prices. The difference is they can pay higher wages because they have the economic growth to sell more goods and services back to the employee – more options, more sustained growth.

The Cook Islands is a small country with the population of a suburb in Auckland. You do the math – a business can only pay as much as it is earning to keep afloat here in the Cook Islands. You can’t pay $15 for each employee but only make $5 profit from a sale. And very rarely you get employers here paying their workers $8 an hour, most businesses minimum are paying their workers $15 an hour and if you have qualifications minimum $20-$30 an hour.

Putting it simply, everything has a flow on effect regardless of who is in government or who runs the businesses.

People leave for NZ for better wages and people from NZ leave for Australia for better wages, people from lower income countries e.g. Fiji come to the Cook Islands for the wages and so on Indians go to Fiji for better opportunities, etc. At the end of the day every country is struggling to keep workers. Covid has forced the labour markets to shift so everyone is feeling the struggle! We aren’t on our own, it is a global issue.

Esmond McKenzie

(Facebook)

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Dog problem

Dear Editor,

Regarding the comments lately about the dog problem, I would like to voice my concern. I am a responsible dog owner so my dog is spayed and registered. When I take my dog on her daily beach walk – accompanied by a couple of her doggie mates – I am constantly harassed by a large pack of dogs that live behind three houses on the beach. Sometimes their numbers swell to a dozen. They rush down on the beach and menace us, even attacking the dogs once and

me when I was passing by on the road. Might I add none of them has a collar or tag.

I have complained to the police and so have some of my friends. A good place for the dog control officers to start on. Please!

Fed up

(Name and address supplied)

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Excellent letter from Heinz Matysik (Cook Islands News, April 8, 2022), where he clearly covers the law and amendments pertaining to dog registrations, the changes in fees over time, and how these fees were deemed – logically “one off”, as per the intention of Parliament.

Regrettably Trevor Pitt (police spokesperson) replies with an inane response, merely citing April 1, 2022 as “the benchmark … etc, etc. He does not even address any aspects of the law, or indeed amendments to support his comment.  When the time comes, which I am sure it will as the public warms up to election time, I know which horse I will be backing to support my dog!

Dog lover

(Name and address supplied)

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China’s ‘trojan horses’

Pity poor Port Moresby with $95 million empty skyscraper courtesy of China. Demolition shouldn’t be much over $1m.

Was the name of the Chinese Enterprise written on the documents in Chinese characters? If the name was in English, didn’t anyone who signed the $95m contract wonder what experience the China Railway Construction Engineering Group had in building a high rise? Does not look like a train, but it might as well have been for all the use it’s going to give.

Cook Islands on the other hand got a police station and courthouse that are falling down, and a water system that poor TTV (To Tatou Vai) will struggle with for decades to come.

China does not have to establish military bases in the South Pacific to threaten our security, they just build trojan horses and we take them in, smiling and saying metaki maata.

(Name and address supplied)

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Call for regulator

I read with interest the letter regarding our major communication supplier. All these monopolies need to be regulated. Another one that needs controlling is Air New Zealand. One-way airfares over Easter is $800 to $900 – this is appalling. So, from eggs, communications to airline travel it appears that the Government is totally unconcerned. Too busy looking at the manganese nodules on the seafloor.

Waiting on Jetstar

(Name and address supplied)