SOCIAL TRAGEDY CLOSING IN ON FIJI, SAYS WORLD BANK. The World Bank says Fiji is on the verge of social collapse, with hundreds of families in danger of falling below the poverty line, reports the Courier-Mail (Australia). A June 8 survey shows that the May 19 coup has had a devastating impact on the nation and could result in as many as 40 percent of Fijians living below the poverty line by late summer 2000.
World Bank representative Sharita Singh says Fiji had managed to work its way up to becoming a middle-income country along the lines of Portugal and Mexico since the last coup in 1987. But the most recent coup threatens to plunge the country among the ranks of the poorest nations in the South Pacific, she said, noting that a damaging decline in tourism can be expected long after the crisis ends while 15,000 garment industry workers are expected to be put out of work by the end of June 2000.
"While proper surveys have yet to be completed, initial checks reveal a mounting social tragedy of a massive scale with hundreds of families in the Suva area alone suddenly left without a breadwinner," the Australian Daily Telegraph quotes her as saying. "One supermarket alone had been forced to lay off some 200 workers following the burning and looting in the capital...Fiji was already coming out of its economic woes and the prospects for 2000 were good when the current crisis erupted."
The economy has all but come to a standstill with trade union boycotts and sanctions limiting all imports and exports of finished products. Cane farmers have not harvested their produce since the start of the coup. The Adelaide Advertiser also reports.