Alisi Daurewa, executive director of Partners in Community Fiji, accused ADB of using the knowledge of Pacific island people for its own gain.
“How many times have we been consulted as community leaders by ADB consultants, and we tell them everything we know and then in the end we do not hear back from them,” Daurewa said.
“ADB have come into our countries, consult the community about a certain issue, go back to their desks, write proposals and come back to our governments, present these findings, then our governments take loans from ADB and in the end we have to pay for those precious funding dollars with our own tax money,” she added.
According to Daurewa, the community leaders should not have to share their knowledge and expertise so ADB can justify loans to Pacific island countries.
“This is unfair practice,” she said.
But ADB, which is based in Manila, said that local knowledge, foreign knowledge and local participation are all important for Pacific gain.
Responding to Pacific Current Affairs the media office of ADB stated: “ADB promotes extensive consultation and participation in all our activities in the islands. We see this as essential for our work in the small, close-knit communities of the Pacific. The people and government of Samoa present one of the leading examples in the region as proponents of good consultation in development.”
ADB has been working in the Pacific islands for over 40 years and during that time has provided a wide range of assistance to the communities of the Pacific.
According to ADB, its projects in the Pacific are based on partnerships and coordination: “These are all areas of assistance that have been requested by the governments of the region. ADB will continue to help the Pacific in areas of development, in policy and capacity development as well as project investments, as consulted, as participated in, and as agreed in partnership with the governments and peoples of the Pacific.”
But Civil Society Organizations last week were adamant that practices by ADB should involve a better integration of grassroots level.
ADB is currently working with 14 Pacific developing member countries to help particular conditions, and to encourage regional solutions to common challenges.
In 2007 ADB loaned $10.1 billion to its regional and non regional members, in the same year their total grants amounted to $672.7 million of which technical assistance was $243.4 million.
