New Zealand to send civil servants to bolster Niue’s public sector

New Zealand intends to send civil servants to Niue on short-term trips to help strengthen the public sector.

The announcement was made following a bilateral meeting between New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Prime Minister Dalton Tagelagi in Niue.

Peters said public sector support to the Niue Government would be worth $13 million over the next five years.

Specialists would help the civil service build its capacity.

“It is understandable that small populations – even New Zealand is in the same situation at times – have a potential shortage (of public servants).”

Peters is in Niue and today embarks on his final Pacific voyage after visiting the Solomon Islands and Nauru.

This is the second high-level visit by a New Zealand delegation to the country, after Prime Minister Christopher Luxon travelled there last month to announce the start of a $20.5 million renewable energy project in Niue.

Niue has been struggling with rolling power outages for years. Parts of the island were without power the night the political delegation arrived.

Peters organised a groundbreaking ceremony for the Luxon renewable energy project, which he hopes will solve the power outages that have plagued the island for years.

Department of Public Utilities Director Clinton Chapman said the goal for the project — which will cover an area equivalent to 56 Olympic-sized swimming pools — is to be completed by December 2025.

“We want to increase the share of renewable energy to 80 percent. The best we’ve managed to do is 38 percent, which was in November last year.”

That number later dropped, he added, because lightning strikes damaged controls in the battery system.

Chapman said once the project was completed it was expected there would be no more power outages.

The previous New Zealand government and the United Nations Development Programme had already committed millions of dollars to solar energy before the Luxon project was announced.

Tagelagi said the money was for an initial trial that “didn’t quite work out,” calling it the “design phase.”

New Zealand has realised the situation Niue is in and the island has now entered the “second phase”, he added.

Niue has a population of about 1,600 and, like other Pacific nations, struggles to maintain its population.

During a visit to a secondary school in Niue, which was also attended by Peters’ delegation, Education Minister Sonya Talagi said local pay rates were too low to compete with New Zealand.

She added that the starting salary of a nurse was about half that of a New Zealand nurse.

“We celebrate the success of those in New Zealand who are able to build their lives.

“But at the same time, we need people to come back to Niue to realise and appreciate the value of Niue and help us build it.”

New Zealand could help with “sustainable wage strategies” by raising wages, she added.

Peters said he wanted to improve Niue’s independence and resilience, and identified tourism as an obvious area for improvement.

The Niue government is struggling with a deficit of more than NZ$15 million.

Tagelagi said he was not concerned.

“Every country in the world has a deficit – that’s not a problem for me.”

He added that in Niue, environmental protection comes first, followed by the economy.

“You can’t focus only on the economy and neglect the environment.

“You can be greedy just thinking about finances, but sometimes when you do that and you don’t take care of the oceans, the future is empty for future generations.

“You take care of the environment first and the economy will follow, there are a lot of people who love to go to places where the environment is pristine and where people care about the environment and the oceans. That’s what we do.”