Pitcairn Island new governance structure

Pitcairn Island went live with its new Governance structure on April 1 .The structure devolves agreed areas of operational responsibility to Council and the Community.

It was the culmination of two years of planning and the day was celebrated with a well attended public dinner in the town square in Adamstown at which messages of goodwill were read from The Governor George Fergusson ,Martin Rapley of DFID Kendall Cobbin of the SDA Church and Commissioner Leslie Jaques.The community contributed to a sumptuous shared meal and afterwards guitars were played and some old favorites were sung

Message to the Pitcairn community on the launch of its new governance structure from the Governor George Fergusson: April 1

Today is an important day for Pitcairn’s progress towards a fairer more equitable form of governance, one to which individuals can contribute positively according to their talents and interests.   A lot of people have put a lot of work into reaching this point including Councillors, the PDT, Division Managers, officials and not least the Commissioner.  Leslie’s investment of time and effort have been exemplary and we are all grateful to him for his hard work and commitment.  But the work does not end here and it will be upto the community and its elected officials to make the structure work effectively.  We should not expect it to be all plain sailing of course – there may be parts of the structure that need some fine-tuning along the way, as I said at the Public Meeting last month.  But I hope you will all show tolerance and be positive in ironing out difficulties that may arise.

The key thing is that we now have established systems to underpin for example recruitment and performance management, and policies for important areas such as child safety.  To some people they may appear overly-bureaucratic but in fact they are essential building-blocks for the future good governance of the island.  Recognising once again the excellent job Leslie has done in bringing us this far, it will now be up to Council and the Division Managers to take on responsibility for day-to-day operations allowing Leslie to return soon to his more strategic role in Auckland.

Christmas for Corrections staff on Pitcairn Island

Christmas is usually the time for families to celebrate together, but for three New Zealand Corrections staff, deployed by the British High Commission in Wellington, this was not possible this year.  They were over 5,000 kilometres away from their families and friends, staffing HM Prison, Pitcairn.

Nonetheless, they managed to take a little time out of the serious and challenging business of working 24/7 at HM Prison Pitcairn to join with the Pitkerners and other off-islanders to participate in some Christmas festivities – although not quite the traditional ones!  

Father Christmas on Pitcairn Island this year was Allan Phillips, currently working as the Superintendent at HMP Pitcairn (at home in New Zealand he is Manager of Sentence Planning, Central Region).  Corrections staff have made a very valuable contribution to the community as a whole while working on Pitcairn, and the invitation for Allan to be Father Christmas bore witness to the confidence and good relations achieved during this deployment.

In true Pitcairn style, Father Christmas arrived with his sack of presents on a quadbike – the mode of transport used by all islanders as well as special Christmas guests!  Everyone on the island (about 57 this year) then gathered to share the festivities in Adamstown Square, where the trees were decked with presents to and from the islanders.

Watching the expressions on the faces of the children as they received their presents was reward enough for Father Christmas, even though he was working in 30 degree temperatures amid sunshine and palm trees – not very deep and crisp and even – whatever happened to the North Pole?!