His and other researcher’s comments suggest that the picture painted by travel posters of idyllic and carefree life on white sand beaches in the Pacific islands is a myth as migration from remote islands is leading to overcrowding and heavy urbanization of what used to be small towns.
“In the field, you see how big an issue this is,” said Hacker, whose office has been conducting a series of health, water and population surveys on Majuro, Ebeye and the remote outer islands. “People would be shocked to spend two days in the community to see houses with no water or electricity, and so many kids that you wonder where they get food to eat.”
He said the water survey now being conducted shows that Majuro’s population has ballooned in 10 years from 24,000 to 32,000 — most of it crowded into a two mile long by 400 feet wide strip of land. And a quarter of these houses are without water storage capacity in a country that depends almost entirely on rain for its fresh water.
“There is plenty to be concerned about,” Hacker said.
Consultant Ben Graham who just completed an assessment of Marshall Islands progress in meeting eight global “Millennium Development Goals,” said there is no “extreme poverty” in the Marshall Islands but unemployment is high, wage levels have not kept up with inflation, and consumer debt, mostly to banks, has grown 80 percent in the last 11 years. These indicators “tell us that financial hardship is reality for most Marshallese today,” Graham said.
The demographic and health survey “showed 22 percent of homes headed by women, and only 30 percent of women working (in the Marshall Islands),” Hacker said. “Those are prime indicators of poverty.”
Hacker also raised concern about the relatively high budgets for the ministries of Health and Education, which have more than doubled since the 1990s to about $20 million each out of a government annual budget of $124 million. “But we’re still seeing a lot of the same results,” he said. “We need to look at outputs. We’re thinking too much about the funding and not worrying enough about results.”
The government ability to provide services to the public “is going to get tougher because of higher debt issues and (United States) funding going down,” he said. “Efficiency is the key. If we don’t make some changes now, we will have real problems soon.”
Through a Compact of Free Association between, the U.S. maintains defense responsibility for this western Pacific nation while providing nearly 60 percent of its annual national budget. But grant funding declines every year as part of the deal that expires in 2023.
Hacker believes an important missing element in decision-making is using statistical information to inform decisions by government departments.
“Senior management needs to know how to use these numbers throughout the year (in running their programs),” he said.
