Kalafi Moala
Nuku’alofa: One thing very noticeable in Tonga is that it is a broken country. Broken in the sense there are so many things that does not work, things that need fixing but have not been fixed, let alone worked on, for years.
Just driving around Nuku’alofa encountering unfinished infrastructures, beginning with the roads and surrounding vicinities, it does not take more than average intelligence to see there are many things that does not work. At least things that don’t work properly, but unfortunately most people are getting used to it.
We seem to be content with mediocrity in our physical and social structures, and the lack of credible services they produce.
The roads, despite the dreamlike pronouncements of millions of dollars to be spent on roads construction, are worse now than when I first returned to Tonga to live in 1989. And its not just the potholes everywhere, but the dangerous huge construction holes in places without any safety protections.
Never mind that roads around Government leaders’ homes are fine. I am talking however about the 95% of roads where 95% of Tonga’s population live.
But its not just physical structures that display the state of things in a country that call itself a royal kingdom, “the jewel of the Pacific”. The services and social structures are worse broken, and that may be why the physical is in the state that it is at.
Someone in leadership must be smoking a drug that causes a “high” outcome in everything: high inflation, high unemployment, high crime rate, corruption in high places, as well as high state of dissatisfaction. The only thing “low” in this situation is the morale!
Our little country is experiencing one of the highest inflation rates, at least since 2008 when it was 12.2%. Consumer Affairs announced last week, there is currently a general inflation rate of 11.3%, and will increase.
This announcement has come at the heels of outrageous hikes of power bills, and especially of the price of petrol which was raised by 0.45 seniti a liter.
When this writer inquired as to why my electricity bill was double that of the previous month, I was told they would check my meter to see if I needed a new one. Blame it on a faulty meter. The problem was there seemed to be faulty meters everywhere in Tonga.
I had to pay the electricity bill to avoid my power supply being cut. But it has been two months and there has not been any official response to my complaint about the hiked power bill.
If the broken state of things is annoying, getting stupid answers to customers’ inquiring questions are more annoying.
Our whole neighborhood has gone through the same experience, nothing has been done about it. Not yet, and probably not ever. It is the prerogative of who owns the power supply to decide what to do or what not to do. Such is the incredible dilemma faced by people when the alternative solutions offered do not fix the problems; they only complicate things, and at the end the consumer is the loser because the power supply is a government monopoly, paid for by our taxes and business usage.
The ordinary consumer is feeling the pinch, as the Government continues to engage in trying to get the country back to some normality post Covid 19. The country has not been told what kind of activities Government is employing to get the country back to normality.
The problem may be attributed to the fact that the standard of normality changes from year to year, and its not getting better but worse.
We are only midway through the year, but 2022 will be remembered as the year of multiple disasters; the volcanic eruption, and the tsunami which played havoc on vulnerably located communities like Mango in Ha’apai, Kanokupolu in Tongatapu, and ‘Atata Island just north of Nuku’alofa.
We were still trying to clean up from the effects of the volcanic eruption and the tsunami of January 15, when the Covid 19 omicron virus entered the kingdom on February 1. Despite the fact management of the virus outbreak was carried out well, and we are on the way back to some normality.
But it is estimated now that more people are sick now with the flu than those who were sick with the omicron virus. The Health Ministry said only 12 people have died from Covid. In the past several months however, up to a hundred people are estimated to have died from various causes, most specifically from NCD illnesses such as cancer, diabetes, kidney problems, heart diseases, and strokes.
Probably if there is something most concerning is the epidemic spread of corruption. What is most dangerous is that in government as well as in governing bodies, corruption has become normalized. Issues like conflict-of-interest and nepotism is no longer regarded as wrong.
Corruption is the mother of criminal activities of every kind, in any nation.
The broken state of things have become normalized, as the leaders are busy with pronouncements of political rhetoric in the name of “dreams and visions” for the country.
Dreams is what people do during sleep. Vision is an idea that is yet to happen; an objective yet to be accomplished. We live in dreams and visions – mental, mystical activities of someone who is asleep.
The only way we can describe what is happening in our little kingdom is that we are in a sleep walk. Unfortunately that is how we are heading to the future.
Sleep walking is, according to the dictionary definition, an activity of walking around and sometimes perform other actions while asleep. To do something in your sleep is the stuff that dreams are made of.
Are we sleepwalking into the future? Are we leaving the past with broken things that are unfixed and/or unfinished? Is that why we are having this sense of living a broken country? It seems that is what is happening in our government, and we have a sleepy and tolerant media to help explain their dreams and visions.
When will we cease dreaming, and seeing visions, and start making changes to our thinking, our attitudes, and activities, so that we can wake up from our sleep to focus and work on the things that really matter.
To be Continued….