“Alia Tele” project soon to become a reality after $4.4M USEDA grant

Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — The government’s long awaited “super alia” project will soon become a reality, thanks to a $4.4 million grant from the US Economic Development Administration (EDA) awarded to the local Commerce Department to support commercial fishing workforce development and economic diversification efforts.

US Secretary of Commerce, Wilber Ross made the announcement two weeks ago in a national news release of the $4.4 million. And the ASG-DOC provided more details on the funding in a news conference held last Thursday, which was streamed live on DOC’s Facebook page and reported on the evening news on KVZK-TV.

Local Commerce director Fuiavailiili Keniseli Lafaele spoke about the funding as well as the summary background of the “super alia”, which ASG has touted in the past two-and half years as the “future commercial fishing vessel” that can go further out at sea and stay out longer fishing than the current traditional alias.

As previously reported by Samoa News, the design for the “Alia Tele or Super Alia” was completed about two years ago, thanks to funding from the US Department of Interior’s Office of Insular Affairs, and ASG and DOC continued to look at all federal resources to fund construction.

According to ASG-DOC, in a separate press release, the grant will fund the purchase of a small fleet of four modern and upgraded traditional-stylized commercial fishing vessels that will support the growth of the local fishing fleet.

One vessel will function as a training platform while the other three vessels will function as business incubators.

During the news conference last Thursday, DOC’s Territorial Planner Michael McDonald explained that the implementation phase of the project will begin immediately and over the next two months they’ll be working on administration task, “so we can prepare for the full deployment and execution of the project.”

“We expect to move into the procurement phase in the first quarter of [calendar year] 2021, hopefully as early as February. This is where we hope to engage a boat builder, a well qualify boat builder to construct the super alia,” McDonald told the news conference, which included ASG officials, local business owners and others. “At that point we’ll also, begin the hiring of key-staff members to help design the rest of the program.”

“This project is more than just boats, it’s a business incubator program,” he declared and pointed out that the “bulk of the heavy lifting, and the work, will be done in the first half of next year, where we’re going to design the program. And more details will come out in the weeks to come.”

He further explained that the second phase of the program includes hiring additional staff, including subject matter experts, captains, experts in fishing, engineers and a number of other different roles.

“At that point, we’ll also begin the actual incubator program,” he said, noting that, “key to the incubator program is the selection process [and] we’ll develop the specifics on how that will flow in the coming year.”

He also said that the “key point” is that ASG-DOC has funding now to purchase the 4 boats and from there, the rest of the work will start to flow.

“We expect, once we trigger the transaction of purchasing the boats, the timeframe will be 10-12 months for the delivery of the first boat,” he said, noting that this was based on the timetable from those in the industry but it’s “flexible”.

During his remarks, Fuiavailiili expressed appreciation to the governor and lt. governor for the continued support and special thanks to the EDA leadership in Seattle, Washington and to others who were critical in helping this initiative move forward.

For more information on this project contact ASG-DOC 633-5155 or its website [www.doc.as]