Transcript
GRANT McCALL: For a long time people on Easter Island, notably the mayor, Petero Edmunds, but many others in the population have objected to the numbers of Chileans, people from the mainland, who come to live on the island, occupy space there, take jobs because they work for less money, and wind up leaving a baby or two behind and then go back to Chile. Now because Rapa Nui is an integral part of Chile they have every right to do that.
So how do you prevent people from turning up on your island and overwhelming it?
Well, you have to be very clever. And what the Rapa Nui have proposed and what the lawmakers in Santiago, actually in Valparaiso have done is to impose a residence law that applies to everyone but especially to Chilean nationals from the mainland. So it's a subterfuge. For the most part tourists stay five to six days on the island. The average stay is about three days so it really isn't going to affect tourism. Exceptions have been made in the law for public servants and a broad range of people who are helping the local population. The economy of Easter Island is booming with tourism. They have got bags of money and it's pretty well distributed because of the family systems throughout, although there are very wealthy people there too. Whereas Chile is still a very poor country. So people see Easter Island, they invest in a one-way ticket. I've seen a number of people roll-up from mainland Chile and get jobs cleaning, helping out in shops, notably taxi drivers. There are about a hundred taxis on Easter Island for a population of five to six thousand people. They in turn offer tours, in other words they take over jobs that can be done by Easter Islanders.
BEN ROBINSON DRAWBRIDGE: What's significant about reducing the stay from 90 days to 30 days? Will that stop people from being able to establish themselves on the island?
GM: That's the hope. You can't even get a short term job if you are there for 30 days. One of the things that has inspired this is a set of laws in Ecuador for the Galapagos Islands. The Galapagos are not open to anybody who wants to go there. There it is sited in terms of the animals that need to be protected but in terms of Easter Island it's the Easter Islanders and there customs that need to be protected. So its a restriction for some kind of quasi ecological benefit, but in this case it's the cultural environment rather than the physical environment.
BRD: Not the economic environment?
GM: Oh no because in Chile everyone has the right to work where they please. You can't interfere with that, at least not openly.