{"id":87004,"date":"2025-10-18T21:24:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T21:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/87004\/"},"modified":"2025-10-18T21:24:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T21:24:08","slug":"samoa-villagers-plead-for-manawanui-wreckage-compensation-te-ao-maori-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/87004\/","title":{"rendered":"Samoa villagers plead for Manawanui wreckage compensation \u2013 Te Ao M\u0101ori News"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article was first published by RNZ<\/a><\/p>\n

The future of the Manawanui wreckage and potential compensation payments remain a major talking point in Samoa.<\/p>\n

The Royal New Zealand Navy vessel ran aground on a reef off the south coast of Upolu in October last year and sank.<\/p>\n

New Zealand paid NZ$6 million to the Samoan government over it, however communities are yet to see any money.<\/p>\n

Tafitoala village has been directly affected by the maritime disaster.<\/p>\n

Resident Fagailesau Afaaso Junior Saleupu said the New Zealand High Commission and Samoa government held a short meeting regarding potential compensation options this week.<\/p>\n

Three options were tabled around the distribution process. One involved the Samoa government being responsible for the distribution of payments among families and affected businesses. Another involved the district authority being responsible for distributing payments.<\/p>\n

The Samoa government has previously said it intends to finalise the compensation process once it passes a budget, which it reportedly intends to do at the end of this month.<\/p>\n

Fagailesau said this week\u2019s meeting, which involved representatives from Samoa\u2019s Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, seemed to be on a tight timeframe.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not enough time for us to raise questions and\u2026 give them our opinion about the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

He believed the Samoa government should be responsible for distributing the money directly to those affected and said many people were concerned that the wreckage remained on the reef.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s good for us in the long run.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fagailesau also said many locals feared the compensation amount – which equates to WST$10 million – simply was not enough to manage the long-term impacts of the wreckage on the environment.<\/p>\n

He also said families in Tafitoala had been severely limited by the 2km prohibition zone around the wreckage.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy village – we are fighting for a big amount for us because we are the\u2026 people that are really affected.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe two-kilometre zone – it covers the area that we access for fishing every day. We\u2019re eating tinned fish.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fagailesau also said the Samoa government told locals in intended to hold more meetings over compensation in the future.<\/p>\n

New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters said he hadn\u2019t been aware of any locals eating tinned fish due to the wreckage.<\/p>\n

Peters spoke to Pacific Waves about the Manawanui. He reiterated that the S\u0101moa government were leading the ongoing process around compensation and the wreckage, which included any discussion around its removal.<\/p>\n

He also denied there was any cover-up over the environmental impacts of the wreckage.<\/p>\n

To date, no environmental report on the impacts of Manawanui sinking has been made public.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a matter of being covert or secretive about it,\u201d Peters said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s analysing what we\u2019re dealing with, and I think that probably better explains what\u2019s happening here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peters said the New Zealand government had been open and transparent in it\u2019s dealing and continued to work with the S\u0101moa government over the Manawanui incident.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis terrible tragedy happened, which we massively regret – no one more than me.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Samoa surf guide Manu Percival said the New Zealand government\u2019s behaviour had not been good enough.<\/p>\n

For months, Percival had been in contact with the New Zealand High Commission about compensation for the boat fuel he used in the immediate aftermath of the disaster to assist with clean-up.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s real crazy. No one\u2019s got any compensation.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also said it had been difficult to get any concrete answers from the S\u0101moa government over the future of the wreckage and compensation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s kind of getting tossed between two different government departments.\u201d<\/p>\n

Percival believed New Zealand should remove its wreckage and that the compensation amount paid to the Samoa government was \u201can absolute joke\u201d.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Peters said the NZ$6 million was the amount requested by the Samoa government.<\/p>\n

By Teuila Fuatai and Susana Suisuiki of RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This article was first published by RNZ The future of the Manawanui wreckage and potential compensation payments remain…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87005,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48802,111,43,139,69,5902],"class_list":["post-87004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-manawanui","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-samoa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}