civil servants strike, several hundred tourists stranded

Several hundred tourists are stranded on the islands of French Polynesia, due to a strike by territorial civil servants launched on Friday, December 6 and followed by almost all firefighters from forty-three aerodromes, noted, Tuesday, December 10, a journalist from Agence France-Presse (AFP).

According to French Polynesia's main inter-island airline, Air Tahiti, some 250 flights were canceled, affecting 4,200 passengers, including 800 tourists.

The Federation of Administration Agents of Polynesia (FRAAP) is asking for a 40% increase in the index point of community civil servants, judged “surreal and excessive” by the Polynesian president, Moetai Brotherson, who wants to concentrate efforts on low wages.

The 118 islands of French Polynesia are spread over an area comparable to Europe and some tourists try to reach by boat one of the rare islands where planes still land.

Tourists in difficulty

“Forty people, including children and a baby, left last night by boat to reach Rangiroa, they have courage because the residents and even the mayor told us that the sea was too rough and advised us against it”told AFP a French tourist staying in Fakarava, an atoll in the Tuamotu.

Beside him, a sixty-year-old diabetic is worried. She is out of medicine. “I had already switched to half doses of insulin and took the last one this morning. If it lasts too long (…)a coma is possible »Nathalie Rieux is alarmed. “The day before yesterday, ten people paid 1,000 euros each for a seventeen-hour catamaran ride to Papeete”she adds. Some tourists no longer have money to pay for accommodation and fear hefty fees to change the international flight they have already missed.

They hope to benefit from a minimum service, charter flights organized for around 1,200 students. Most adolescents from the atolls and small islands go to school in Tahiti and return to their families twice a year, for the school holidays in July and December. Certain islands, among the most touristy (Bora-Bora, Tahiti, Rangiroa and Raiatea) are not affected by this strike movement because their airfields are managed by a private company, Aéroport de Tahiti. With 262,000 visitors welcomed in 2023, tourism is the leading economic sector in French Polynesia.