Vanuatu asks for a boat, a school and a code of conduct for its MPs

PORT VILA, Vanuatu - Vanuatau has asked New Zealand for help to obtain everything from a fibreglass boat to a new code of conduct for its MPs.

Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters is in Vanuatu, leading a delegation of MPs, businesspeople, government officials and representatives from non-government organisations.

While he was in town yesterday meeting with Vanuatu's Speaker Sam Dan Avock at Parliament, other members of his delegation were at Melemaat Primary School in the village of Mele.

Melemaat Primary School has 352 students, 15 teachers and a headmaster.

Last year, the school was chosen by the Ministry of Education to be one of 40 piloting a new literacy programme called "book flood" where the aim is to put 100 new books into year three and four classrooms across Vanuatu.

The school has very basic facilities but the children at Melemaat at first appear to have an enviable pupil to teacher ratio, until a teacher says that half the children in her classroom have been unable to attend because of the heavy rains which have been flooding roads.

The New Zealand delegation squelches across the grounds to a meeting house.

Tuwharetoa paramount chief Tumu te Heuheu does the honours as delegation leader while Mr Peters meets parliamentarians in town.

The chief is presented with a petition, asking with help for funding for a library for the school, and for help to build a new school on a new site.

The existing school was built in the 1950s and is no longer adequate for the population of 4500, and growing, in the village of Mele, the group is told.

Chiefs' administrator Kalo Mariki, a former headmaster of the school, told reporters Melemaat had to be moved to a new site to house more classrooms, gain sports grounds, and so that the children would not be disturbed when there were ceremonies at the meeting house.

It was also the hope of parents that a new school would house primary and secondary students, so that their teenagers would not have to be sent to secondary schools elsewhere -- including on outer islands if students were directed to go there by education officials.

Mr Mariki was unsure how much a new school would cost, saying estimates had yet to be costed as a plan had not yet been drawn up. But he said officials were talking.

Another petition is also presented by the people of Mele, this one from the local fishermen's association asking for a fibreglass boat to help train young people to become fishermen.

A NZAID officials said funding for the school would be looked at in the aid agency's overall education aid package.

By 2007/08, NZAID will be contributing around $6 million a year towards basic education in Vanuatu.

Back in Port Vila, Revenue Minister and United Future leader Peter Dunne talks about a subject dear to his heart -- MPs' conduct. Every year back home Mr Dunne compiles a list of New Zealand's worst behaved MPs -- those that get turfed out of Parliament, those forced to apologise and withdraw unseemly remarks.

Mr Dunne said New Zealand was providing funding ($53,000) for the development of a code of conduct for Vanuatu's MPs. This would codify all the Speaker's rulings in one place, he said.

Community and Voluntary Sector Minister Winnie Laban said training of MPs for work on select committees was also discussed.

Fresh back from sitting in on a session of the Vanuatu Parliament, Green MP Sue Kedgley and National MP Georgina te Heuheu both comment about how "polite" the Vanuatu MPs were to each other. Not like us at all, they say.

- NZPA