Dear Editor, it was really gut wrenching to read the pleas of Jacqueline Ngatai-Cowan in your Saturday paper (A humble plea for help, Letters, January 8, 2022).

The lady is desperately crying for help to save her partner’s life and the future of her family of three young boys.

Her partner was sentenced to three years imprisonment for cannabis possession. He is dying right in front of her and their boys because he is being denied the right to a medical opinion that could potentially save his life.

I don’t know what I can do to help but I have a moral obligation to speak out.

What in the world happened to the Cook Islands?

What a dysfunctional mess!

While there are many factors that have contributed to our country’s chaotic state, one that stands out above the rest is our Government losing its moral and ethical way.

What is moral and what is not is clearly defined, but sadly countless members of Government and the public work force these days are choosing to redefine the meaning of moral in order to justify their self-indulgent, hedonistic behaviours and lifestyles.

If PM Mark Brown doesn’t get this man out of here on the next available flight to New Zealand for medical treatment, then he should immediately resign or he should get voted out of office.

Sincerely,

Steve Boggs

Beyond scoring political points

Coming on two full years since no tourists (save for that short time period) and the dog problem is worse by a large degree that it was pre-Covid, and ditto for the noisy motorbike problem.

Tourism Council much too busy with trying to import 300 ex-pats to replace the hundreds that got a fast-track visa to work in New Zealand and who continue to fly out by the dozens each week.

The dogs and bikes could by now be utterly under control, the private sector could have raised the hourly rate of the ex-pats before they fled to New Zealand. Any business that can’t afford to pay a living wage must, by definition, be unviable financially.

So now we need to import hundreds more ‘fresh meat’ to put it crudely, desperate enough to work for the slave hourly rate, many of whom will be abused by the same employers who abused those who have escaped, and who were never protected by government, the churches, the Tourism Council.

Is anyone in charge of this country beyond making speeches and scoring political points?

(Name and address supplied)

Tuna price = $35 kilo

Well, we reached a significant milestone on Saturday last when fresh tuna hit $35 per kg from our local fishing company. Significant because we are now paying 200 times the 17 cents foreign fleets pay us for the same fish.

And of course, that calculation only holds if the foreign fleets are 100 per cent honest, and reporting every kilo. That’s about as likely as a politician being 100 per cent honest.

So, if the foreign fleets are cheating on the reported catch by half, then we must be paying 400 times what they are paying.

But, it’s comforting to know that there is no way we are going to get cheated in the same way by the foreign seabed mining interests who are about to get licenses, since our current crop of politicians are so very much smarter than the ones who got swindled by the foreign fishing fleets.

(Name and address supplied)