Tonga’s new dialysis facility is set to temporarily open at Vaiola hospital, according to sources who are involved with the project.
They said if things go according to plan the services are expected to open to the public in April.
The new dialysis centre was
planned to be built at His Majesty’s Tufumāhina estate.
It is understood works to register the land were still in process.
Prime Minister Pōhiva Tu’i’onetoa
has announced the dialysis facility was one of his government’s priorities.
As Kaniva previously
reported in May last year, a private company in Salt Lake City was partnering
with Tonga’s Ministry Of Health for the project.
The
facility would be established “at no cost to the government.”
There is no dialysis available in Tonga which means those with end stage kidney disease have to travel overseas for costly dialysis or a kidney transplant.
Around 400 boxes of rotting chicken have been destroyed in Vava’u after authorities inspected a refrigerated container at a Chinese shop in Neiafu today.
Neiafu Town Officer, Vāvā Lapota, said inspectors from MAFF have found the chicken to be unfit for consumption and were destroyed.
Lapota said the inspection came
after complaints from customers.
He said they believed the owner of the container intermittently turned off the electricity in an attempt to save power but since the container was 40 ft long this could not help kept the meat frozen from time to time.
Bags of expired flours and rotting salted beefs were previously found at the store, Lapota told Kaniva News.
Four Tongans who have been quarantined at an Auckland navy base for two weeks were part of more than hundred evacuees who have started to be released after passing health checks this morning.
All have been cleared for release today, and New Zealand remains
free from any confirmed cases of coronavirus, NZ Herald reported.
It said the first shuttles have left the military facility bound
for Auckland Airport with Pacific Island nationals who will be returning home.
The New Zealanders will be released to return home after medical
checks are complete around 1.30pm.
Meanwhile, a group of 25 Tongan athletes were
welcomed in London by Tonga’s High Commissioner Hon Fanetupouvava’u Tu’ivakano.
It was the final Tongan group to be evacuated
from China amid coronavirus outbreak.
They were expected to return to Tonga via Dubai
and Auckland on March 5 and 7.
While in UK the 51 athletes are supervised under the medical supervision of British health
professionals.
CNN report said, all but five deaths from the virus have occurred inside mainland China, where an additional 98 fatal cases of Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, were reported Tuesday morning. The number of confirmed cases in China increased by 1,886, bringing the global total to over 73,325.
The vast majority of those cases have been in
China, but concern has been growing in the past week over much smaller but
growing outbreaks in Singapore, Japan and Hong Kong.
According to China’s National Health
Commission, since the outbreak began in December, more than 12,500 patients
have recovered and been discharged from hospital.
Two Tongan men were expected to appear at the Manukau District Court today to enter pleas for the alleged shooting of a Tongan woman at a house on Dawson Rd, in Clover Park, Ōtara, in July last year.
The woman received gunshot wounds before she was hospitalised.
Her husband talked to Kaniva news this evening and said he wanted more publicity of the case.
He said he had read Kaniva’s reports of the shooting death of a Tongan mother in Favona last month and wanted his wife’s case to be given the same coverage.
He said he wanted it to be a learning experience for the community.
The husband claimed the two men aged in their late 20s were responsible to two shots being fired which injured his wife before they got back into their car and drove off.
He said he wrote down the registration plate’s number of their car and reported it to Police.
At the time police said
reports of a person being taken into custody near the southern motorway
on-ramp, near Manukau, were related to the incident and they
were speaking to a number of people in relation to the shooting.
A
neighbour told Stuff at the time a large Tongan family with children lived
at the house.
It has been a month now, after Tongan mother and grandmother Meliame Fisi’ihoi was killed in her home, her killer remains at large.
The 57-year-old was gunned down at her house in the early
hours of Wednesday, January 15.
Authorities were called to the house on Calthorp Close, Favona, after reports of a gunshot.
The expulsion of Tonga by the International Rugby League is a shameful development.
The Tonga National Rugby League has now announced it
will appeal the expulsion.
However, rather
than prolonging this shameful farce, the TNRL’s leadership should resign en
masse so a clean start can be made and the kingdom’s world class players can be
backed up by a committee that is judged
by the IRL to meet international standards.
The TRNL was
suspended in October after it sacked national head coach Kristian Woolf and
players threatened a boycott of the World Cup Nines and end of season tests.
The
International Rugby League recommended a package of reforms for the sport in
Tonga in December at the end of a two-month investigation into how the game was
run in the country.
TNRL Secretary
William Edwards’ response to the proposed reforms was not helpful.
“This is
being imposed against our will by a group of idiots that don’t know what is
going on in Tonga, who think they know what is best for Tonga, and impose their
will without our consultation, without our right to have a say, and they’re
basically saying ‘we’re going to change you whether you like it or not’,” WIlliams
said.
“Our
association has been running since 1988, and we’ve put teams on the paddock
since 1988 with great success and then all of a sudden he feels we’re doing
something wrong that needs to be changed.
“What a
joke.”
However, the
IRL’s investigation was not a joke. It was carried out in response to concerns
from, among others, the then acting
Prime Minister Semisi Sika, the Tonga Sports Council, the Rugby Football
League, the Australian Rugby League Commission and the Rugby League Players
Association.
For Edwards to
respond in this way was tempting fate.
What was
needed was a very public admission of failure over many years and a complete
resignation of the existing board and a lifetime ban on them ever returning so
that there could be a complete re-booting of the game in Tonga.
By pushing
Tongan Rugby League onto the world stage,
Tonga’s Rugby League players, whether playing officially as the Mate
Ma’a or not, have kept faith with their fans
Many fans,
sadly, will think the TRNL board did not.
Tonga’s Parliament will now not sit until May, the Speaker said in a statement today.
It said the Legislative Assembly was scheduled to sit yesterday, February 17.
The Lord Speaker made the decision after submitting a request by the Prime Minister to adjourn the House to the the Legislative Assembly’s Business Standing Committee.
“In his letter, the Prime Minister stated his government need time to complete some unfinished business and they are currently working on new initiatives, including the preparation of the 2020/2021 Budget and new Bills to be tabled in the House,” it said.
It is a normal practice for the Prime Minister of the day to
seek the Speaker’s approval of Parliament to convene or adjourn.
The World Bank’s Board has approved US$2 million to be spent on improving statistical and data collection in Tonga.
The
bank has selected Kiribati to be the other pilot programme in the multi-million
dollar Statistical Innovation and Capacity Building in Pacific Islands project.
“With
the Pacific Islands covering an estimated 640 inhabited islands spread over an
area equal to 15% of the globe’s surface, the challenge of gathering accurate,
timely and relevant data is immense,” Michel Kerf, Country Director for the
World Bank in Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Islands said.
The
lack of quality data meant it was hard to properly understand the region’s
levels of poverty, welfare and social developments.
Better
data would help develop better policies to ensure lasting change.
“This
is why we are investing in helping the Pacific to build a common approach to
statistics and data-gathering so that cross-country comparisons can be
conducted and regional trends monitored thereby improving the information
available for policy making,” Kerf said.
The
Statistics for Development Division of the Pacific Community would work with the
National Statistics Offices in Tonga and Kiribati to modernise their data
collection processes.
The
data collected through the project would help inform the monitoring of national
outcomes in the Tonga Strategic Development Framework and the Kiribati 20-year
Vision (2016-2036).
Both
countries were already experiencing the extreme affects of climate change and
capturing climate data related to socio-economic indicators was an important
focus for the National Statistics Offices.
The
project is being paid for by the International Development Association (IDA),
the World Bank’s fund for the world’s most in-need countries and was prepared
with the support of the Australian Government.
The main points
The World Bank’s Board has approved US$2 million to be spent
on improving statistical and data collection in Tonga.
The bank has selected Kiribati to be the other pilot
programme in the multi-million dollar Statistical Innovation and Capacity
Building in Pacific Islands project.
Damaged tyre on takeoff forced a Real Tonga flight from Tongatapu to Vava’u to turn back and make an emergency landing on Friday 14.
“It is understood that on takeoff a tyre was damaged and work gets underway to determine whether or not the damage was caused by “foreign object damage” or it was a “component failure”,” Real Tonga airline CEO Tēvita Palu told Kaniva news this morning.
The national airline was responding after we reported the emergency landing last night.
Palu said work gets underway to send a “formal report” of the incident to the Ministry of Civil Aviation.
He said the aircraft landed safely at the Fua’amotu airport.
He said engineers replaced the tyre and after about two hours it returned to services.
As we reported last night, noise had been heard coming from the aircraft shortly after it took off which forced it to circle the air traffic control tower to see if the radar could help identify the problem.
The aircraft finally landed
without further incident and taxied to the terminal.
The emergency services at the airport were put on standby.
A Real Tonga flight was forced to make an emergency landing at the Fua’amotu domestic airport on Friday.
The aircraft was travelling from Tongatapu to Vava’u when it allegedly developed a mechanical issue.
Noise had been heard coming from the aircraft shortly after it took off, a source at the airport who spoke on the condition of anonymity told Kaniva News.
He claimed the aircraft circled the air traffic control tower to see if the radar could tell what the problem was.
The aircraft finally landed without further incident and taxied to the terminal.
The source said emergency services at the airport were put on standby.
Kiliki ‘i he halangaope ‘i ‘olunga’ ke ke fanongo ki he fakataha ‘a e kāinga Niuatoputapu’ mo e ‘Eiki Palēmia’ ‘i he lea fakaTonga’.
Sponsored:
An audio of the Prime Minister’s meeting in Niuatoputapu was provided by the Prime Minister’s office and transcribed and translated into English by Kaniva News. This English version of the audio had been abridged.
Prime Minister Pōhiva Tu’i’onetoa told a meeting with Niuatoputapu residents that in 50 years no government had attended to the priorities they had reported to Parliament year after year.
He said these priorities were reported during the annual
visits by Members of Parliament to their individual constituencies.
Hon. Tu’i’onetoa said before they came to Niuatoputapu, he did a research and he found out what these priorities were.
He shortlisted them into seven major needs which
included roading, a wharf upgrade, safer drinking water, electricity, telephones,
a request to widen and broaden the sea passage to Tafahi island and oversea
markets for their crops, handicrafts and fishing.
The Prime Minister said he undertook to do his best to
address all these urgent needs.
He said he was the first Prime Minister to visit Niuatoputapu and gave residents an opportunity to share their concerns and needs directly with him.
He invited the people to talk to him and said this was the government of the people.
He said his roading project had gathered momentum,
although some people did not support it.
He said about three kilometres of road had been sealed
in Niuatoputapu which meant 62 more kilometres remained to be filled and
sealed.
He publicly denied allegations on social media which
alleged the government had given away TP$3 million each to some cabinet
ministers because of the government’s road project.
Hon. Tu’i’onetoa said the truth was these monies were
part of a deal to buy rocks from ministers who owned quaries. He previously
said there was nothing illegal about these deals.
When the floor was open for the people to speak, the government agent for Niuatoputapu said the sea entry to Tafahi was blocked by rocks which were pushed there by tropical cyclones. He said this had made it difficult for Tafahi residents to sail. When the tide was low no boat could sail through the passage, he said.
He asked the Prime Minister to install new signal ights
so that vessels could dock at the wharf at night.
A building at the wharf was believed to have asbestos-containing
material and he asked the Prime Minister to send experts to remove it.
There were also requests to upgrade and repair the foreshore, have solar power for the school and for the government to include Niuatoputapu in the government’s domestic animals donation project.
