Dear Editor,

Re: Ex-Minister objects to street vendors plan 

I am dumbfounded why the government is proposing such law as I myself like the Hon. Minister was a street vendor many years ago.

The semantic of my pragmatic humble beginning plying street vendor to weave between office desks in down town Apia to sell any commodities to get money.

That education had made me a better tool for the future the essence of herein a headache for many in today’s world.

Being a street vendor at young age gave me the will to succeed and overcome obstacles life had thrown at me that I had come out unscathed.

It surely educated me at young age the spinning nature of commerce and the courage not to rest on my laurel but continue on to achieve my own destiny without relying on anyone to lift me but survive on my own effort.

As Rome never was built in one day, and so as our Palisi mansion from seleni and sisipeni collected from I and siblings’ effort at young age to help our parents with our daily needs, and to buy that property currently valued over a million Tālā.

However, we never did it during school time as we also attended the learning institutions.

I remember well those mundane days when we were on the way to school in Apia in the morning carrying the supplies for my late mother to sell at the Savalalo Market.

After school, I would change from school uniform and don my street vendor apparel.

From that humbled effort, it surely educated me to implement the nature of the beast that without dollars and cents, no ice-creams and fasimamoe, fish, eggs, butter that we as kids way back then in Samoa were eating.

Did we ever blame the Honourable Prime Ministers of Samoa back then?

Why would I blame the late Fiamē Mata’afa Faumuina Mulinu’u ii?

Why would I blame the late Va’ai Kolone even he had a Sawmill and Hotels in his name?

Why would I even blame Hon. Tuiatua Tupua Tamasese Lealofi iv; since New Zealand had left Samoa, perhaps had taken with them even the bank book and if ever was any vacant spaces on MV Matua and Tofua, would have taken the soil as well.

It’s how it was but for now above all, being a street vendor is not a burden but an advantage for the kids.

A country’s economy is built and measured from the diversity of her people entrepreneurial will; believe you me.

It is our ambition to deliver that counts.

Tofaeono Joe Hollywood