"Hotels and tourism are the fastest and easiest way to push the wealth of our country," said Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Maliegaoi regarding the many established resorts in Samoa.
The Prime Minister was responding to the issue of chiefs interfering with running resorts out in the rural communities where they are charging tourists an additional sum aside from the payments to be made to the resorts.
For some this tends to be quite frustrating as this extra layer of payment is considered unnecessary.
PM Tuilaepa seemed to have a much different approach to the issue.
"If you have a hotel in A'ufaga, don’t go so far to lure people from Lefaga, or Lepa and other villages far away, hire people of A'ufaga as it will be providing the youth with jobs," said the PM.
"It is crucial to developing your own community," he said.
As to the chiefs and their extra cost issues, Prime Minister says, "hire them too, they can be night guards, security of some sort, that way they won’t be taking money outside of the resort but will have a job to provide for their families."
"The ideal thing is for these resorts inside villages, it is the people of these villages that will be blessed by them," PM reiterated.
Questions however, claiming that maybe its tourism that’s been the reason the cost of living has been quite high for Samoa.
Prime Minister responded saying these are all works of development for Samoa, and thus there is no connection with the cost of living.
"Soon people would no longer look for markets overseas, once our tourism is in full swing, we’ll work everything here in Samoa," he concluded.
Tourism is the second highest gross income for Samoa, with the many cruise ships and tourists flowing in to the country through our borders.
The first is remittances from Samoans living abroad.