Te Aponga Uira wishes to address yesterday’s Cook Islands News reporting of the workplace accident that resulted in injury to staff and a power outage on 15 August this year.

The workplace accident took place while our teams were working in challenging conditions to repair the cross-island cable and TAU’s immediate priority following the accident, was for the wellbeing of our staff and their families.

TAU issued a public statement (https://teaponga.com/tau-outage-update-2/ ) about the accident less than 24 hours after the outage, which our team restored within 90 minutes of the accident occurring.

Yesterday’s reporting is misleading. We reported the accident to relevant authorities and independent investigations are underway under relevant legislation, including one commissioned by TAU from a qualified and experienced person.

The reporting also speculates, unhelpfully, on matters of blame – as to which it is for qualified investigators in possession of the full facts, rather than the media, to advise those investigations. TAU cannot, appropriately, offer any comment on those matters at this stage.

When those processes are complete, and we have information to share, we will do so in a manner consistent with our obligations to the investigating authorities while continuing, at all times, to respect the privacy of our staff and look to their wellbeing.

For now, one of the injured staff members remains on sick leave and is recovering; the other three have resumed work.  Having regard to our staff members, it is unhelpful for anyone to speculate about what happened and what the findings of the investigations may be.

END.