Letter: Missing pay check, missing millions?

Dear Editor, Whatever the truth behind Police spokesman Trevor Pitt and whether or not his pay packet went missing, the story recalls decades ago when the government, literally, did not have the money in its bank accounts to meet the public service payroll and went into the vault where there were bags of Tangaroa Dollars.

Not the wimpy coins we have today, but the big heavy original dollars, where a few in the pocket was real weight. And each public servant got a bag of the things.

Back then tourism generated a fraction of what is now almost a half-billion-dollar income to the country. Decades later, and with that half-billion, we can’t afford to pay our Police more than minimum wage, ICI could not, for months, paint lines on the new roads because they had no money, we see public infrastructure all over the country un-maintained. While our ‘leaders’ wine and dine around the world.

The promise of tourism benefiting us all simply has not come to pass. A broken promise, like the promises we get a month before each election. We’re suckers and we just need to accept nothing’s going to change and get on with daily life.

(Name and address supplied)