By Martha Taumata Faavae
A quiet but insistent push behind the scene for villages to become self sustained is starting to show promise, with so many stalls starting to appear along the road side to sell vegetables, fruits and plantation stables.
The Minister of Women and Social Community, Tuitama Dr. Talalelei Tuitama, is a happy man as the changes become more noticeable in the villages.
His Ministry has been aggressively pushing for villages to step up plantation or vegetable gardening inspections, at a time when Samoa is going through a difficult economic period.
“We should have done this a long time ago in the villages but we were depending too much on remittances from families overseas,” Tuitama claimed broadly.
‘The Ministry has been making a strong push through the network of village representatives to go into the development of the land since.
“We have been making this drive in the villages ever since we were faced with health issues that has caused serious setbacks to our local economy.”
The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries played an equal share as well in the combined effort to encourage the villages to become more self-sustained.
As far as the Minister is concerned the signs are showing up very quickly that it is working.
“ If you look around, there are food stalls in almost every village to sell the fruits of their labour of the land .
“ Some of the people are only just starting to realise what their options are when they have virtually nothing to turn to.
“This is a far cry from when the economy was flowing smoothly and they were dependent on it.
“The cost of living is coming down as well with most of the local businesses tapping into cheaper produce from the road-side compared to the markets.”
Tuitama has noticed also the contribution by churches tagging behind the villages with inspections every month of congregation members working the land.
The Minister congratulated the church leaders for their contributing role and of working together with the village leadership as a community…
“We maybe going through some hard times with the coronavirus pandemic but we have truly learned very important lessons from them as well.
“This pandemic has encourage people to work and not to be dependent on anyone but your own hard work of the land gifted to us by the Lord.”
