10 Mar 2011

Tahiti businesses in protest at economic crisis

2:27 pm on 10 March 2011

Members of several small enterprises in French Polynesia have launched a protest over the economic and political crisis.

They have organised themselves as a group called Te Pupu Api and managed to get to talk to the President Gaston Tong Sang after parking vehicles and diggers outside the presidential palace.

They expressed their concern over the high cost of living and rising unemployment.

The protest comes amid a political crisis, with Mr Tong Sang refusing to act on the budget passed by the assembly last month.

A sit-in by another group is planned for outside the assembly in three days to express the public frustration with the situation in Tahiti.