Dear Editor,

More reason to move back to New Zealand or Australia ... with minimal wage, sky rocket interest rates at the bank, petrol diesel costs are high and food in general is of high cost, then by all means I’ll be more than happy to be an agent to recruit to support our locals for overseas work.

Even pensioners get better money then minimum wage and no offence they haven’t got much time to live and the new life (our future/pepes) get $50 a fortnight! Are you kidding me, what a joke!

Sunielia Tom

(Facebook)

That’s terrible, we are complaining about everything – $50 a fortnight for our pepes, what can you buy with as little as that, kaore? Someone told me, even if you work hard twice over or more, not worth it. I myself is on the pension and still working, e itu anere taku pension plus my wages, te complain nei rai, my heart goes out to all of you trying to survive with as little as that, not fair, time to decide what’s best for our tamariki, love you.

Tua Nena

(Facebook)

Electricity bills to increase

A dream was proclaimed a decade ago, Cook Islands will go green in 2020.

How’s that going now.

On the startline yes that’s a great idea, outer islands get solar and batteries. How long solar panels last for now and oh, batteries last just as long. In the real world, batteries would have been used as a backup. We will need to connect to the grid, have our solar panels take care of the kilowatt hours, we get a power cut, batteries take charge till power is back on. Perfect ratio. Batteries for backup.

The grassroots people will always suffer and will continue to do so, the people on top cannot see what’s beneath them. But let’s be real here, Government’s fixation on our GDP would put them in good stead.

Would I encourage those who can to go abroad? Better wages, better internet services, free Wi-Fi. You name it.

Look around when you can on this big rock call Rarotonga. Construction. People and some of them our own have come back to build then travel back and forth. We will continue to be enticed by a colonial mentality. You no longer need to be colonial to be a coloniser.

This deep sea mining in the future will not make us better off but may help our economy to build more infrastructure, not necessarily our well-being.

Ina Tipokoroa

(Facebook)

There is a widening divide between those who were offered subsidised domestic solar systems or who have solar farms and pay nothing for their electricity, and those who have had no other choice but to continue to pay the high cost of diesel-fuelled electricity. Where is the equity?

Maureen Hilyard

(Facebook)