Prime Minister James Marape said efforts would be made to mobilise people aged 16 to 30, who were not in work or education.

Some of the blame for the rioting and looting has been put on out-of-work youth.

The PNG Post-Courier quotes him saying the responsibility for doing this will be passed to provincial and district administrations, which will be expected to make use of the money from the intervention funds they receive.

“I want to appeal to every young Papua New Guinean child out there, I’m your father. As Prime Minister, I’m your father, listen to this.

‘Talk to your church’
“Go to your church somewhere, in your community, neighbourhood and you and tell them, I’m not in a class this year, or I have graduated in a college or university and have no employment,” Marape said.

“The entire 97 districts throughout the country will be asked to mobilise the youth.”

The prime minister urged the youth to make contact with their respective district education advisors and community development advisers, including district development authority chief executive officers.

He said the churches would link the youth to these district governments.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Churches across Tonga have commemorated the victims and the struggles endured as a result of the eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano on 15 January 2022.

The eruption, the largest atmospheric explosion recorded during modern history, was estimated to be hundreds of times more powerful than the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.

It generated a huge sonic boom that could be heard as far away as Alaska — more than 9000km away.

Hundreds packed the Cathedral of St Mary in Nuku’alofa — one of the largest churches in Tonga — where sermons were delivered, commending Tongans for showing resilience over the past year.

“All the different churches are commemorating,” said Monsignor Vicar Lutoviko Finau, who overlooked the service at the cathedral.

“We’re coming together to thank God, and to encourage one another,” he said.

“Listening to the various people on the radio across this week, there’s been a lot of conviction from people that January 15th was a miracle.”

A conviction that is shared by vicar Lutoviko himself. The cathedral he oversees sits less than 100m away from Nuku’alofa’s waterfront. Remarkably, the church suffered little damage, thanks in part to a reef system entrenching Nuku’alofa’s bay area.

“I was with parishioners cleaning up this place, preparing for the liturgy on Sunday … all of a sudden I heard the big bang. We took off right away because we knew there would be a tsunami . . . I took my family and went to higher ground.

Tongan volcano eruption — relocation nothing easy.    Video: RNZ Pacific

“I couldn’t sleep that night because I wanted to know what happened to the cathedral because it [was] so close to the seafront,” vicar Lutoviko said.

“When I drove around to the seafront the next day . . . the seawater flooded the area of the cathedral, but there was none inside the cathedral . . . the only damage to the building was from the ashfall which . . . covered it.”

Three people died as a result of the eruption, a remarkably low number of deaths considering the magnitude of the disaster. Thousands of Tongans were left homeless as a result, and livelihoods destroyed.

“For myself, today marks history”, said Kilistiana Moala, a member of the congregation.

“Being alive today, I’m just glad to be still here.”

For many Tongans, the commemorations did not just pay tribute to Tonga’s survival of the eruption. Less than a month afterwards, the covid-19 pandemic reached Tonga, resulting in the deaths of at least a dozen people and leaving thousands ill.

“It was a very tough year,” Moala said. “I worked with Tonga’s Geological Services, so we did a lot of work in the aftermath of the volcanic eruption.

“After the volcanic eruption, we had to work during lockdowns because of the Covid outbreak . . . it was really hard because we couldn’t be with our families whenever we wanted.”

It is a sentiment shared by Tonga’s Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni Hu’akavameiliku, who came into power just days before the eruption. Three months later, he fell ill to covid-19.

“Thank the Lord that we are still here,” Hu’akavemeiliku told RNZ Pacific.

“Moving into a new year, hopefully things will continue to get better.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ. 

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Church minister Suiva’aia Te’o says proactive communication, compassion and clear information have led to a fully vaccinated congregation.

Like most churches operating under level three and four rules, the Sāmoan Methodist Māngere Central church livestreams services on Facebook and holds Bible studies and prayer meetings over Zoom.

To keep the young people engaged they run Kahoot! quizzes and online talent shows.

But when lockdown rules lift, the congregation will be able to confidently worship in person — because all 120 of them are already double-vaccinated.

The church’s Reverend Suiva’aia Te’o says no edict or mandate was imposed by her or anyone else. Rather, she made sure everyone was given clear and relevant information, and then members of the congregation got the vaccinations of their own volition.

“One Sunday I gave a brief talk about why they should take it. My thinking was if everybody understands why, then they can make a decision for themselves,” she says.

Te’o was motivated to promote the vaccine after attending a talk organised by Pacific health provider South Seas for church ministers in South Auckland. She says the crux of her message to the congregation was to do it for the “love of family”.

‘We breathe the same air’
“We all live in the same world and we breathe the same air,” she says. “The delta variant can spread so easily, and so I reminded them it was about the safety of their families, the safety of the community and the safety of the church.”

She also recruited the support of her church’s youth group leaders, including Māngere College student Gardinea Lemoa.

“We have youth meetings every Friday and so I’ve just been encouraging them to get vaccinated and to get their friends and family vaccinated as well,” says Lemoa.

“We’ve also been making up memes so they could post things on their social media accounts.”

Te’o is well aware that some Christian leaders are calling the covid-19 vaccine the “mark of the beast” and a sign of the end times, but she’s got no time for such attempts to stoke fear.

“I know they say that’s what they believe, but I don’t agree. I think it’s just an excuse and they need to get vaccinated.

“We have got this remedy, and I’m convinced it has been developed with God-given wisdom and knowledge by professionals so we can be safe.”

86% of eligible Pacific population
Before this weekend 86 percent of the eligible Pacific population have had their first dose, compared to 89 percent of Europeans and close to 100 percent of the Asian population.

Around 50,000 Counties Manukau District Health Board residents still need to get their second dose in order to reach the 90 percent double-vaccinated threshold. It’s a marker the Auckland and Waitematā DHB populations need about 15,000 and 40,000 doses respectively to reach.

Given the lower vaccination rates for Pacific peoples, associate professor of public health at the University of Auckland Dr Collin Tukuitonga says it is still a source of frustration that the Ministry of Health decided on a centralised approach at the start of the vaccine rollout and didn’t lean more on churches to support the immunisation programme.

“It is encouraging to see so many community-led initiatives happening now. But these should have been resourced from the beginning,” he says.

“Instead, the first big mass vaccination event was held at [higher learning institution] Manukau Institute of Technology (MIT). It was great that they got 16,000 people vaccinated then, but it actually made things worse in some ways, because they barely vaccinated any Māori or Pacific people.”

He says when local organisations like churches are empowered to take the lead, mistrust and misinformation become less of a hurdle to overcome.

“Now we have Pacific providers taking ownership we are finally seeing a lot more acceptance and uptake of the vaccine.”

Quickly got on board
Te’o says though her congregation quickly got on board with the vaccination rollout, many have still found lockdown challenging.

“I thought with this lockdown it would be quiet for us, but it’s not – there’s more and more Zoom meetings and more work. It’s been a hard time, the world is changing a lot for so many of us and there’s a lot of uncertainty.

“We’ve been providing food parcels for some families and some have needed small monetary grants to help with paying the power or other bills.”

But one thing she is confident about, given all her congregation is vaccinated, is that when they do get back to in-person services they’ll all have that extra layer of protection.

Local Democracy Reporting is a public interest news service supported by RNZ, the News Publishers’ Association and NZ On Air. Asia Pacific Report is a partner.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

New Zealand’s Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins says the actions of the Destiny Church leaders in leaving Auckland on the eve of the alert level 3 lockdown were “completely irresponsible”.

Earlier today it was revealed that church leaders Brian and Hannah Tamaki left Auckland on Saturday night, arriving around midnight in Rotorua, where they told a crowd gathered for the Sunday morning service they had “escaped” to avoid the level 3 lockdown.

It comes as concern mounts over some churches defying lockdown rules and spreading misinformation about the covid-19 pandemic.

On Tuesday, Hannah Tamaki posted on Facebook to say the couple were now touring the country and would be in Invercargill this weekend.

In this afternoon’s daily update, Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said the Tamakis’ actions were “completely irresponsible”.

He said he encouraged everybody to exercise their own judgment.

“Sneaking out of Auckland right at the beginning of a lockdown and having large gatherings of people is simply putting people at risk unnecessarily.”

Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said any breaches of the current health order which underpinned alert levels were a wider government responsibility.

The Destiny Church is a Pentecostal fundamentalist Christian movement founded in 1998 by the Tamakis, who continue to serve as visionary and senior ministers. It is based in South Auckland and has a strong Māori and Polynesian membership.

No new community covid cases
RNZ News reports that despite more than 16,000 tests being processed yesterday, no new cases of covid-19 have been found in the community.

Dr Bloomfield said two new cases were found in managed isolation and quarantine, and one of those was a historical case.

Dr Bloomfield had said yesterday that any positive cases that may have resulted from potential exposure to the virus in Auckland last week would start to turn up today.

Hipkins said tests were still coming in, however, and “we’re still in the critical period … we’re not quite there yet” in terms of being certain the latest cluster had not spread further.

As of midnight last night, 9431 people have received their first doses of the Pfizer vaccine, including over half of New Zealand’s covid-19 frontline border workers, Hipkins said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz