Chinese Government provides NZD 4.8 million grant for Courthouse Construction Project (Linked to Record ID#69560)

Project narrative

In October 2003, the Cook Islands Government announced that the Chinese Government had agreed to provide a grant for the Courthouse Construction Project. China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) reportedly committed NZ$4,800,000 (US$6 million) of total grant funding for the project. The purpose of the project was to construct a courthouse building for the Ministry of Justice in Avarua (exact locational coordinates: -21.207251, -159.774899). China Civil Engineering Construction (CCECC) was the contractor responsible for implementation. Construction commenced on October 29, 2003 and approximately 85 Chinese workers were involved during the construction phase. The courthouse was opened for use on its scheduled completion date (November 15, 2004). Father Tony Dunn, a Catholic priest, called for a boycott of the courthouse on the eve of its formal opening, warning of a ‘hidden Chinese foreign policy’ in the Pacific. The sponsor (China’s Ministry of Commerce) then conducted an on-site, post-project inspection in November 2007 and December 2007. Cook Islands Secretary of Justice Mark Short announced in June 2010 that the courthouse was "only six years old [but] starting to fall apart’. He said that the courthouse was not built to suit a tropical climate – when it rained, the front steps were dangerously slippery and parts of the office would flood. Also, there were cracks in the marble walls and the ventilation and air-conditioning system was poorly designed. Electrical services reportedly failed from the start, requiring expensive repairs by local contractors. According to Reuters, a 'make-shift pen was built outside the courthouse because the [jail] cells beneath it ran out of oxygen if occupied for more than two hours'. The Chinese Government eventually agreed to provide a grant to repair the courthouse and several other government buildings in 2017 (as captured via linked Record ID#69560). According to Cook Islands Finance Minister Mark Brown, it was a major repair job because China’s previous construction work was ‘substandard’.