Cook Islands Investment Corporation (CIIC) wants to move Blackrock Preschool, “to prioritise the development of sporting codes”. May this writer humbly suggest that CIIC in the first instance prioritise Cook Islands landowner rights?

The 136 acres of land known as Pokoinu 107 was created by the Land Court in 1905. In 1912, decades before satellite communication, 37 acres of the land was taken from the landowners for a Wireless Telegraph Station for the public purpose of the long wire aerials that were then necessary for long distance communication.

That’s all behind us and some of the owners of the land have been asking, for years, “Why is our land being used by week-end golfers? What ‘public’ use is that? Looks ‘private’ to us”.

Come on CIIC, give the owners the land back, they will not only leave the Blackrock Preschool alone, they will give the school a perpetual use.

(Name and address supplied)