‘Secret’ first home under way

A badly kept secret spread around Aitutaki over Easter that builders and government workers have been working on a prototype of the low-cost house for families who lost their homes in Cyclone Pat.

A Ministry of Infrastructure and Planning team has had three days and nights to start and finish the $35,000 package home.

Not even local MP Teina Bishop was aware yesterday that scores of men have been working round the clock since last Thursday to completely build the two-bedoom example from the ground up.

It has a concrete floor and block pillars, which were completed at 2am yesterday, and by this morning the team expected to have the roof on and most walls finished.

The rush was to show NZ Foreign Minister Murray McCully the first new government built home when he arrives with Cook Islands cabinet ministers at 8am this morning.

The building team is being led by Mayor Tai Herman and MOIP construction chief Ata Herman.

The new prototype home is actually for Pani and More Pita who lost their house in the cyclone.