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PACIFIC BRIEFS
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Posted on Feb 27 2001
500 weapons unaccounted for in Solomons
HONIARA, Solomon Islands (PIR) — More than 500 police weapons still are unaccounted for four months after the signing of the Townsville Peace Agreement.
The accord ended two years of ethnic conflict between Guadalcanal and Malaita islanders over land rights, political power and jobs.
The Chairman of the Peace Monitoring Council, Sir Peter Kenilorea, said an inventory at a government armory shows that at least 50 more police weapons have been removed since the beginning of the year.
There are no records showing who took them.
A. Samoa gas stations fail environmental inspection
PAGO PAGO, American Samoa (PIR) — Local gas station owners and operators have until May 25 to comply with federal underground fuel tank regulations or face stiff penalties, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The EPA inspected the territory’s 18 underground fuel facilities and found major violations at 17 sites.
A majority of the facilities already failed to meet a 1998 deadline to install required protections for spill, overfill and corrosion protection, the EPA said.
Gas stations that do not comply with the latest deadline face penalties of up to $11,000 per violation per tank per day and being shut down.
PNG housewives highest HIV risk
SUVA, Fiji (PIR) — Housewives represent the highest at-risk group for contracting HIV/AIDS in Papua New Guinea, a health official said at a regional women’s conference in Fiji.
Elizabeth Cox of the PNG National AIDS Program said wives have no power to insist that their husbands use condoms.
Although women are expected to be faithful to their husbands, men have the freedom to have many sexual partners or wives, she said.
“Men stop their wives from coming to the clinic to be tested because they don’t want to be shamed,” Cox said at the Third Pacific Regional Meeting on Violence Against Women.
