Project a ‘race against time’

APIA – Dozens of Chinese labourers have been flown into Samoa to “spend all day in the heat, every day, getting once ramshackle Apia Park fit for an All Black test later this year”, Fairfax News has reported.

While a Manu Samoa versus All Blacks rugby test on July 8 is an emotional high-point for the Polynesian nation, like much else in the country it’s being paid for with Chinese aid money, New Zealand-based Pacific affairs reporter Michael Field has written.

The story quotes a Samoa Observer report that a multi-million dollar facelift is being carried out by Beijing state-owned Shanghai Construction Company.

The company has flown 100 Chinese workers and hired 40 Samoan locals in what Apia Park project official Hong Liang Da said is a “race against time”.

“The workers had to sacrifice their holidays to make sure our work is on schedule,” he said.

“The rainy season at the end of last year meant the workers had to do inside work.”

Hong said it was only on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day they did not work.

“We came back to work after those days,” he told the Samoa Observer. “We work so that we don’t fall behind schedule.”

The men have to work from 6.30 am to 6pm – but if it gets too hot they are allowed a two-hour break in the afternoon.

Renovations are underway on the grandstands along with a new roof, seating, a satellite dish, an electronic scoreboard and a new sound system.

Porject manager Hong would not say what it was costing.

Shanghai Construction has an “awkward reputation” around the Pacific and is known for glitzy buildings, such as apartments in Suva and a court house in Rarotonga – both needing expensive maintenance shortly after they were opened, Field reports.

They built a lavish swimming and sports complex for the South Pacific Games in 2007. Samoa has sought New Zealand aid since in a bid to maintain the facility.

Samoa has a colonial history of using Chinese labour, reporter Field writes.

Under German rule between 1900 and 1914, Samoans would not work on plantations so Berlin allowed for the importation of around 6000 “coolies” from Guangzhou.

After the New Zealand occupation in 1914 many were forcibly repatriated but hundreds with Samoan families remained.

In 1931 the New Zealand parliament passed a law forbidding Chinese men from having sexual relations with Samoan women.

Several couples were prosecuted but the fact that around 30,000 Samoans today claim part Chinese heritage suggests New Zealand law was honoured more in the breach than the fact, Field writes.