Vanuatu

Head coach Moise Poida has requested all the players to return to training this week, starting Wednesday, 10 February at 5pm at Port Vila Stadium.

"I am very happy with the response from the senior players last year before we played against Fiji at Port Vila Stadium.” said Moise Poida.

“We want the clubs to release their players to come to training again and help us prepare well for the OFC Nations Cup in Papua New Guinea.”

This is according to the General Manager of the Vanuatu Tourism Office (VTO), Linda Kalpoi.

“We are now working together with our stakeholders to get more tourists to come to Vanuatu, we have TV advertising that will be running in Australia and New Zealand as we speak. At the same time we have new videos on line and on social media,” she said.

Meanwhile New Caledonia and New Zealand got off to slightly slower starts, but were equally as deadly in front of goal to earn 5-1 and 5-0 margins over Fiji and Vanuatu in their respective opening matches.

Vodafone Arena in Suva, Fiji came alive tonight as long awaited rematch of 2011’s final got underway between the four-time champions the Kurukuru and twice runners-up Tahiti.

The largest political camp led by members of the former opposition group continues to claim it has the backing of 36 of the 52 MPs.

But the chief administrator of the coalition's Vanuaaku Pati said the other camp, led by the caretaker government, was also claiming it would have the numbers on Thursday.

All government schools started their programmes this week.

But in Shefa and Tafea provinces many schools still have damaged facilities due to the cyclone while some parents affected by drought have struggled to pay fees.

The two are the remaining Departments to work on their policies after the Departments in the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Forestry, Fisheries and Biosecurity have kick-started the process towards working on their policies the launching them to provide guidelines on how and what each Department is expected to achieve in the years ahead.

Just Play Vanuatu Project manager, Rorona Kalsakau said hundreds of kids turned up last weekend and enjoyed a special day of kids football and the main topic of the two festivals is Child Protection.

She thanked the JP coordinator of Penama Football Association, Father Albert Toalak for bringing the kids together.

During the festival the kids played basic football before exchanging key messages about how to make life safe in a community during their daily activities.

However, he confirmed that there was one imported case of the zika virus recorded in the country last year before Category 5 Tropical Cyclone Pam hit the country.

“This year there is no zika virus recorded by the Health Ministry’s surveillance system set up in the hospitals, health centres, and clinics to monitor for diseases,” he added.

Building upon the success of their ‘Dei Blong ol Gels’ (Day for Girls) girl specific surfing events in 2015, the VSA is now sending a crack squad of Vanuatu’s best high school aged girl surfers to compete at the 2016 Surfest High Schools Challenge in Australia.

Acting Director for Agriculture, Mark Vurobaravu said this week, communities that were destroyed heavily by the natural disaster are back to their subsistence life.

Vurobaravu said people have restocked seeds and planting materials of food crops and re-built their gardens. 

They planted planting materials that were destroyed, he said, and they did that soon after the event, well before they dried up.

However he also revealed that the current El Nino has disturbed a lot of work put into the recovery initiatives.