Christine Anu performing tonight at the Gold Club

CHRISTINE Anu is finally here and performing tonight for the first time in Papua New Guinea  at what better place than the country’s party capital, Lamana’s Gold Club.

So who is she and where does she come from?

Anu was born in Cairns to Torres Strait Islander indigenous parents from Saibai and Mabuiag Islands.

She began performing as a dancer and later went on to sing back-up vocals for The Rainmakers.

Her first recording was in 1993 with ‘Last Train’, dance remake of a Paul Kelly song.

The follow-up, ‘Monkey and the Turtle’, was based on a traditional story.

After ‘My Island Home’, she released her first album, Stylin' Up which went platinum, and also gained her a position as a spokeswoman for Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.

In 1995, Christine won an ARIA Award for best female recording artist as well as a Deadly Sounds National Aboriginal and Islander Music Award in 1996 for best female artist.

Baz Luhrmann asked her to sing on the song ‘Now Until the Break of Day’ on his Something For Everybody album.

It was released as a single and the video then won another ARIA award and led to her being cast in Moulin Rouge!

It took five years for a follow-up to Stylin' Up to be released; 2000's Come My Way made her a mainstream star.

The single ‘Sunshine on a Rainy Day’ was a Top 40 hit for 13 weeks in Australia.

Come My Way went gold.

In 2000 she sang ‘My Island Home’ at the Sydney 2000 Olympics Closing Ceremony.

Anu has been nominated for 16 ARIA Awards.

She has also had a notable acting and TV career, appearing in Dating the Enemy-a 1996 Australian film starring Guy Pearce and Claudia Karvan, and then an Australian stage version of The Little Shop of Horrors in the same year.

Her stage career developed with a starring role in Rent in 1998 and 1999.

Anu was offered a role in a Broadway production of this musical but had to decline due to commitments in recording her second album.

In 2003, she appeared as Kali in The Matrix Reloaded and played the character on the video game Enter the Matrix.

In 2004, she became a judge on Popstars Live, a television quest broadcast on the Seven Network similar to Australian Idol.

The programme failed to achieve a similar level of success, leading to network executives to pressure the judges to offer harsher criticism of the contestants.

Anu refused, leading to her resignation as a judge that year.

In a statement issued on her departure, she said: "I chose to play a positive role model and wanted to encourage these young people in their endeavours, rather than criticise them.

“Although leaving Popstars Live was a difficult decision for me to make, I do feel somewhat relieved that I can now focus on my music."

Anu is a mother with two children - Kuiam (born 1996) and Zipporah Mary (born 2002).

So that’s her biography wrapped up in a nutshell, so make sure you don’t miss out on your opportunity to see her live at the Gold Club tonight.

Members free entry with proof of card, and non-members K40.

 Be in early to get the best seat in the house. See you at the Gold Club!

 

40 years of darkness for Papua New Guinea

By Dr Kristoffa Ninkama

South Simbu

 

SIR Michael Somare led PNG to self-government in 1973 and independence in 1975.

Since then, he has served continuously in various capacities either as Prime Minister or Opposition leader for 40 years.

The question I would like to pose is: “Is PNG better off now than it was 40 years ago?”

The simple answer is: “No.”

In the 40 years that Sir Michael has been in politics in PNG, the following occurred:

1. The people of PNG continued to rely on the infrastructure left behind by the Australian administration. Roads, bridges, administrative headquarters, schools and aid posts have fallen into disrepair. Successive governments failed to carry out infrastructure development projects. It is the Government’s fiduciary responsibility to maintain and continue infrastructure development. So for 40 years, roads, bridges, schools, health services, administrative buildings, transport and communications have fallen into ruins. Is this something to be proud of?

2. The general health and well-being of the people have steadily declined. Many Papua New Guineans are dying of preventable and treatable diseases and HIV/AIDS is threatening to decimate a generation. Malaria, TB and sexually transmitted diseases are on the rise as all the health centres and aid posts built in the colonial days are no longer functioning. The provincial and referral hospitals are grossly underfunded, understaffed, poorly equipped and lacking basic medicines. The health services are so primitive that PNG politicians have been flying to Australia with their families to seek medical treatment. So for 40 years, the people of PNG had been deprived of their very basic right to decent health services.

3. The education system in PNG has been on the downward spiral. Schools lack basic essentials like decent classrooms, chairs, desks, library books, audio-visual aids, books, pencils and other essential learning aids to give a child an opportunity and a fighting chance to attain a decent start to attaining knowledge and literacy. The majority of school-aged children are not attending schools and the literacy levels of the average Papua New Guinean is on the decline.

4. The citizens of PNG are resorting to cargo cultism, sorcery, sanguma, etc, because the level of ignorance in our societies is on the increase. An ignorant society spells disaster for a nation.

5, Law and order problems are escalating. Port Moresby is a virtual prison. The citizens of PNG’s major towns live in constant fear of something awful happening to them. Can you imagine living in fear in your own house in your own country every day of your life?

6. For 40 years, successive politicians and their families have done very well for themselves at the expense of the people they represent. Our politicians can afford to own expensive vehicles, buy properties in Australia, educate their kids in private schools and overseas, seek private hospital treatment overseas, etc. Are all these possible from a mere politician’s salary?

7. More than 85% of the people are struggling on a daily basis with malnutrition; hook worm infestation, rotting teeth, swollen tummies, chronic malaria infestation, unclean water sources, no access to decent health services, roads, bridges, communications, electricity, etc. These basic services had been denied to our own people.

8. Government institutions are failing at an alarming rate and millions of dollars have been swindled from the Finance Department under Sir Michael’s watch. Yet, he has remained quiet.

9. I am sick and tired of hearing our politicians say PNG is a rich country. I have not seen one toea of these proclaimed riches filtering to my people in the villages. Is this something to be proud of?

Oh, the poor Engans. All those cassowaries and pigs ready to be slaughtered to celebrate 40 years of what?

Forty years of being in the dark ages?

 

Kill the 'sacred cow - the Melanesian Way'

By JOHN FOWKE
 I can tell you the reason for the story of declining services and declining prosperity, the declining well-being of the people of PNG.
It’s very simple.
 As coined by a group of Papua New Guinean intellectuals in the eighties, the problem is “The Melanesian Way”.
There. It’s been said.
The big, silent, grey elephant which has loomed in the background, nameless but recognised by many, is out in the open.
Tackle this elephant, or at least recognise it, everyone.
Recognise it for the handicap that it has become in the struggle for modernity and fair distribution of the nation’s wealth.
The three decades of increasing puzzlement, of critical editorials, and of irate declarations by such as Malcolm Kela-Smith, MP ... have  been three wasted decades, unless the whole experience is realistically summed up, now, and an appropriate antidote to the problems  applied to the developing wounds on the body of this young nation.
The Melanesian Way is the way of a fractured multi-tribal society.
A society which existed triumphantly, successfully, and entirely independently for tens of thousands of years.
Within this society, land, the possession of land and resources sufficient for the tribe’s or clan’s subsistance needs, land was the single, prime, and most-often considered fact of life.
The clan’s land must be protected and perhaps opportunely extended in any way possible.Without land and hunting and fishing resources sufficient to its needs, the clan or tribe was literally nothing.
Such a condition was the result of bad planning, inept political moves, and ultimately, physical weakness in battle.
The result would be annihilation as a clan or tribe.
The anger of the ancestral spirits would haunt the remaining, fugitive remnants of the people, no matter that they might be absorbed into other clans sympathetic to them.
It was the absolute end, and such an end was never to be contemplated.
This was also the basis of the way of the ancient Britons and the way of the wild tribes of northern  Germany, people whom even the might of Caesar’s army was never able to completely subdue or completely disposess.
All of us, at some time in the history of humanity, have lived under “The Way”.
In PNG, historically, the law which governed life applied 100 per cent to one’s own group, and only in terms of one’s own advantage to one’s neighbours.
Right from when one lay at one’s mother’s breast one learned that within the clan all were brothers and sisters. Outside the clan, all were enemies.
Within the clan was solidarity and trust.
Outside the clan was the enemy, albeit of various grades.
Thus evolved a set of ethics and moral appreciations which, within an overarching customary system, provided a practical set of safeguards and an acceptable level of justice.
A dispute-resolution system evolved which, while often draconian, even violent, worked within the nature of the culture.
 Here, where a lie was told or a pig stolen from an enemy, these were not crimes, nor even misdemeanours so far as one’s clan-brothers were concerned.
Only within the clan were such acts classed as crime.
Disputes arising in the clan could be fatally disruptive, and a long-winded methodology involving mediation, negotiation and the payment of some form of compensation-in-kind evolved.
Even though this was sometimes inconclusive, and inevitably a long-drawn-out process, it was preferable to outright fighting within the clan.
Here, in the foregoing two paragraphs, is a concise outline of The Melanesian Way. While it served the people well for as long as they remained out of communication with the developing industrialised, class-based, nationalistic polities of the rest of the world, it is demonstrably not compatible with the course of modernisation in which PNG is engaged.
The tribal ethical matrix, where honesty is confined  to a limited number of relationships and by nature encourages nepotism,combined with the propensity to talk and procrastinate endlessly  rather than to face difficult ethical, management, and disciplinary problems constitute the big, grey elephant that no-one wants to talk  about.
Perhaps the Melanesian Way has become a sacred cow.
Kill the sacred cow.
Look at life and the future straight in the eye, and begin to keep pace with the rest of the world, PNG.
Directness, honesty and responsibility in government are the marks of an effective, fair society.
Social history and ancient customs belong in the school curriculum, in museums and story-books, not in the management methodology of a modern nation.

·        John Fowke has spent most of the past forty-eight years living and working in rural Papua New Guinea.

Getting it wrong in Papua New Guinea

A plea for more realism and understanding from Australia
By JOHN FOWKE
In days of old, in PNG, white men were generally addressed by non-English-speaking Papua New Guineans as “Masta.” Today this honorific is infrequently heard; where a foreigner is known well, his first name is universally used.
Where there is no bond of familiarity; say, in a shop or a taxi, a Tok Pisin speaker is likely to address a foreign man as “Boss” although “Mate” is also widely used in application to those obviously of Oz or Kiwi origin.
In the ‘eighties, a time when foreign personnel were being rapidly replaced with locals as managers on the coffee-plantations of the Wahgi Valley, there were daily enquiries regarding any upcoming vacancy  for a “Blakmasta.” Today, in the wisdom generated by 30 years of increasingly bad public administration and the emergence of a cynical and manipulative political elite, the term is returning into common useage to describe this ruling clique of powerful men. “Ol Blakmasta ia!”
Thinking Australians on both sides of the political divide are concerned about their country’s relationship with Papua New Guinea. This is natural both for reasons of proximity and of history, but more specifically, questions are being asked about the monumental failure of the Howard government’s recent Enhanced Cooperation Package; a major initiative which began with a bang engendered by positive experience in the 2003 Solomons intervention but one which has ended without even a whimper in circumstances which require an open examination.
ECP was an expensive, ambitious and highly-publicised aid package agreed upon by the parties – and one which received a resounding knock-back when actually implemented. Within a very short time of their arrival more than one hundred specially-recruited Australian police officers together with families and support retreated in a forced and humiliating manner from Port Moresby and Bougainville. Following this there has been a deafening silence from the initiator of the scheme, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Downer. Nothing is said about the stupefying level of failure in primary research and planning by DFAT which led to the ignominious retreat of the Australian police. Nothing is said about the immense, unbudgeted cost of compensating and re-settling these Australian contractors, nor of the stress and strain they and their families have suffered. Nothing is said, either, about those others, many others, signed on, packed and ready to go, who remained yet to take up their postings in PNG when the ECP edifice collapsed. And again, nothing is said about the abandonment of long-leased high-cost apartments and offices; of abandoned vehicles and office and communication and technical equipment and hastily-terminated supply and service contracts signed with Port Moresby-based agencies.
The total cost of this incredibly-badly-planned exercise can only be imagined. Canberra will be extremely coy if asked to provide figures. What is revealed anyway is the incredible naivety, the plain, simple, old-fashioned bungling incompetence of Australia’s extremely well-paid diplomatic and aid mandarins.
There is no gainsaying the fact that the road to reform in PNG is through the enhancement of policing and the gaoling of a sufficiently exemplary number of those leaders proven as being corrupt; the first step, indeed, but a first step which has to be taken by Papua New Guineans regardless of any assistance which may be offered. The fact that the Australians underestimated the pressure elements of the elite of PNG is able to bring to bear, added with the already-mentioned lack of effective research and planning regarding legal and constitutional issues is a major indictment of those in charge of the ECP project. Is this the standard for all Australia’s overseas aid programs? Does anyone today remember the infamous Magarini Re-Settlement Scheme in Kenya? An Australian-funded and planned and managed dry-land farming project of major proportions involving the relocation of thousands of impoverished people, Margarini  was touted as the embodiment of  the hands-on, Mr Fixit ethos of  Australian dry-land farmers. It was in fact such a disaster that a book written about it by knowledgeable observers became a classic of “what not to do” within the world’s vast aid-based consultancy industry. Since PNG’s independence in 1975 Australia has implemented many generously-funded projects there. Many have been failures in one way or another although none has been as embarrassingly bad as Margarini. In recent years the costly and largely wasteful South Simbu and North Simbu projects come to mind, as does the 15-year-long- (late 1980’s-1990’s) - Assistance to the PNG Police program- costly and largely without result except for the enrichment of the relevant consultants.
It is a characteristic both of AusAid and its partners, the private consultancies which plan and execute projects, that the word “memory” is not in their vocabulary. If there are good summing-up or debriefing procedures for project evaluation these are not activated, and whilst one can understand why, one can also understand the great propensity which exists at AusAid for re-inventing the wheel. But perhaps the trouble is that summary briefings following completion are never asked for. In fact the whole sisterhood/brotherhood of the aid industry, the departmental bureaucrats and the consultancies concerned, is collectively very quiet about what it does. This begs the obvious question: why?
Australians in general together with the breed described in the media as “Pacific Specialists” really don’t understand just how different PNG society is from that which occupies Australia. The “Pacific Specialists” upon whose advice aid programs delivered in PNG are based  obviously draw from a Western matrix for their ideas, not only because this is usually the only basis they have, but also because it is the unstated but underlying objective of all these projects to Westernize the recipient society in some measure. With only a superficial understanding of the groups of people they are working with it is natural that engagement and achievement also are superficial, together with results. PNG is a highly-convoluted maze both in a physical and a conceptual sense. Nevertheless, there is a way into this maze, and it involves a knowledge of both the culture and the language of the people targeted. An ability engendered by the interest and initiative needed to move freely and without fear in street-side and village society; to speak the lingua franca as it is spoken by the people. To be accepted and welcomed as a friend by ordinary Papua New Guineans.  Whilst the remnants of the old Australian School of Pacific Administration may have informed the early development of ANU’s School of Pacific Studies a continued offering of  courses helpful to those of a mind to take up the Pacific challenge-( if such people there are )-is entirely lacking so far as this writer is aware. More’s the pity. The lack is so obvious, manifest in any encounter with a young Australian DFAT official or Australian project-consultant. The writer has often had cause to feel angry at the bland and comfortable assumption that you can take a thirty-year-old MBA from a teaching position in some God-forsaken TAFE College in country Victoria and confidently put him in charge of producing a relatively complex set of results in a rural setting in PNG. Just watching these young men and women smiling uncertainly and speaking very slowly in what they imagine to be a form of broken English comprehensible to their little captive audiences is enough to make ones hair turn white. On the other hand it is just as aggravating to be present in a hotel largely taken over for an Australian-funded police seminar, and to find that whilst the PNG police officers attending the seminar socialize together in the bars and bistro areas, the Aussie consultants presenting the seminar arrogantly dine separately in the hotel’s high-cost restaurant. Insulting enough in a Western setting, in Melanesia where the sharing of food is the basis for all meaningful interaction this sort of behavior is both outrageous and provocative. The writer has been witness to many such instances of the inability or unwillingness of Australian advisors/consultants to engage at a personal level.
In 1964, in the first general election ever held in Papua New Guinea, -( that for the House of Assembly which paved the way for  National Parliament and full independence in 1975)- the Australians introduced the Westminster Parliamentary system. In the sense that a “loyal opposition” provides checks and balances it may have been possible at the time to see a “party system” as desirable; but only for a moment. For where, in this society, were the natural “ parties” requiring representation? A simple, subsistence-based tribal society is one which defines itself on the basis of region, of “turf”; not by social class or by possession or by disparity in terms of wealth and opportunity. Whilst it was important for the Territory to begin to address the rest of the world as a nation after 1964, the needs of a rapidly-changing society were - and still are - visualized by the people in regional terms. Reason suggests that fair distribution and the empowerment of the people would best have been answered by a regionally-anchored system of representation; representation able to be controlled by the electorate. Nevertheless a caricatured version of Australian party politics was allowed to arise, more by default than with intent, or so it seems today.
The party system of representation was and is like a dollop of oil dropped into the pond of PNG society. There is no affinity, the one for the other. Here, in PNG in 1964, as opposed to Walpole’s England of the early eighteenth century, there was no landed aristocracy, no landless peasantry, no rentier, no hereditary class of soldier, squire and priest empowered by social position alone to oppress a lower order. Here was an almost uniquely egalitarian, subsistence-farming society whose wealth, the land upon which it subsisted, was shared by all.
The blithely-approved-and-imposed Westminster party system has been the nursery within which the political, administrative and social dysfunction which defines PNG in 2006 has developed. Far from an enfranchisement leading to the empowerment of the people, the party-system set up by – or perhaps it is better said countenanced by Australia, has led to the marginalization of the proletariat in this once most egalitarian of societies. It has led to the growth of a small, unstable, unscrupulous but very tenacious governing elite, divided by greed within itself but united in its concern to keep and expand its hegemonic hold over the affairs of the nation through its exclusivity. The growth of the very conditions which the Westminster system slowly eradicated in Britain is, in complete paradox, the outcome of Australia’s foolish decision to establish it in a setting where there was no requirement for it.How could the Australian powers of the day have been so dense? The answer lies perhaps in the strong “them-and-us” outlook manifest in the ruling clique of senior Administration officials viz-a-viz the elected and appointed “private enterprise” “mission” and “indigenous” members of the old chamber of representation, the Legislative Council, or “Legco” as it was called..
Today it is difficult to find any record of more than superficial discussion of alternatives. At least one was readily to hand, in the shape of a fully-democratized version of the former Legislative Council supported by the nineteen existing District Advisory Councils, democratized,  and the network of well-established and democratically-elected Local Government Councils then numbering more than 100. This would have been governance anchored firmly at the roots of society, government answering the reality of regional needs and interests as opposed to non-existent social, class-based or occupation-based needs.
Those who administered PNG in that time were under the thumb of the irascible, intelligent, and idealistic Paul Hasluck, Minister for Territories, a man who bridged no objection from an underling. Whilst a forceful man, it must be said that  Hasluck suffered opposition from the largely conservative bureaucracy in Port Moresby in the form of  delayed responses and obfuscation; delays which may have caused him to be unduly testy and perhaps precipitate in some of his decisions. In the late’fifties one of the very few really clear-thinking and innovative officers of the post-war T.P&N.G Administration, the late David Fenbury, advocated  “a common inter-racial franchise for direct elections to the Legislative Council…..”, and again in 1960 he reminded Hasluck of this in a personal communication. Fenbury was the principal guide and philosopher of the Local Government Council system introduced into the Territory in the early ‘fifties. Whilst respected by Hasluck as his equal in intellect, Fenbury may have been something of a bete noir as far as the Minister was concerned as he was probably the only senior officer in the Administration who would not defer to Hasluck in exchanges of opinion.
Hasluck and those in power in Port Moresby who failed to see the fatuity, even if not the potential menace, of the evolving party-system prior to the 1964 elections must bear much responsibility for the looming social disaster which is modern-day PNG.
As the twenty-first century opens, PNG is being forced through a process of massive social adjustment more intense than that experienced by almost any other nation. A simply-structured tribal society is becoming, willy-nilly, an incredibly more complex one. However, change occurs incrementally as far as an individual is concerned; few pause to analyze and understand what is taking place in terms of a movement towards hegemony. And in any case they know that their voices will not be heard in the forum provided by the party system. So people just put up with things until an issue such as Sandline galvanizes them into brief violence.
Australia has been a humane and unusually generous foster-parent to PNG, both before and after independence. Though the standard of public administration and accounting in PNG is poor, there is a foundation of convention and methodology and procedures and principles which is well-enough established to remain in place for better times. Better times in which, with a more mature, less-self-important and all-knowing approach, Australia may be in the position to help in very important ways, in particular by engaging positively with current moves to institute a revised program of decentralization and service-provision. This has been designed and presented for comment by a group of well-qualified and respected Papua New Guineans- (PSRAG chaired BY Sir Barry Holloway) - and deserves all the support it can gather. It may be an opportunity which if lost or spoiled by half-measures does not come again for decades.
Australia laid solid foundations in terms of a wide appreciation of democratic ideals and principles among the educated of PNG, who are themselves largely the creation of Australia. There are many of these who remember the era of their elevation into literate, numerate adulthood in well-run schools managed by Australian teachers, with great gratitude. People who resent the fact that such a facility is no longer available for the benefit of their own children. It is this generation of the educated middle-aged, educated but village-based men and women, who will welcome and support an Australian effort to return PNG’s dormant Local Government system to a lively, living grass-roots-governed vehicle of social and economic progress in the land. Here is the place to spend the remaining loot from the unfortunate ECP scheme.
Noted Australian poet and friend of PNG the late James MacAulay once said something to the effect that what Australia achieves in its relationship with PNG will come to define Australia as a nation. When we think of  Australia’s own history as the Prison Colony of Great Britain and of the ambivalence many Australians of the ‘twenties and ‘thirties of last century felt  regarding Australia’s growing role as a colonial power in PNG, MacAulay’s statement has great resonance, and as well, great meaning for the future. PNG’s ongoing social crisis is not just today’s problem; nor is it just PNG’s problem; substantial assistance is needed and it will come from nowhere but Australia. This is as it should be. But in the manner of its giving, Australia must be much more insightful and much more cogniscent of the causes of the problems of its close neighbour and ally.

©John Fowke    8.05.06                                  2723 words

John Fowke has spent most of the past forty-eight years living and working in rural Papua New Guinea.

Suspects flee

Sir George murder case hits dead end

 

By SAMSON KENDEMAN

 

SIX suspects charged with the wilful murder of pioneer businessman Sir George Constantinou have escaped from the Boroko police cells, The National reports.

Their escape, blamed on police negligence, had placed in jeopardy efforts to bring to justice those involved in the brutal killing of Sir George last Dec 16.

The six were among nine inmates who were virtually handed the keys to the cell gate to walk out to freedom in the early hours of Saturday morning.

The six suspects had been held at the Bomana prison awaiting their trial in court, but were brought to the Boroko police station last Friday for an identification parade.

The parade was to assist police in their ongoing investigations.

NCD metropolitan commander Chief Supt Fred Yakasa and his operations commander, Chief Insp Andy Bawa, on Sunday confirmed the escape of the suspects.

Chief Insp Bawa said the six suspects and three others escaped from the cells around 4am on Saturday.

He said it appeared the policeman who was manning the gate of the cells accidentally left the key on a table inside the cell, and the suspects grabbed it while the policeman was asleep.

They opened the gate and let themselves out.

Three senior police officers, who were on duty during the time of the escape, have been suspended, pending an investigation by the Police Internal Affairs division.

Chief Supt Yakasa said all efforts would be made to recapture the suspects.

Both Chief Supt Yakasa and Chief Insp Bawa yesterday appealed to the public, residents, community leaders and youths in settlements to help police locate the suspects.

“They are very dangerous to the communities, so we urge the public to notify police if they see them.”

The police information lines are 324-4200 or 324-4229.

Five of the suspects are from Goilala, Central province, while one is from Morobe.

Sir George was killed along Nigibata Road in Gerehu, next to the Tete settlement, as he was leaving his timber yard last December, leading to a public outcry against the high level of violent crime in Port Moresby.

 

Mount Hagen fuel situation “grim”

Fuel supplies in Mount Hagen are critically low after landslips again cut sections of the Highlands Highway.

 It is the fourth time in recent months that fuel tankers have been unable to resupply the nation's third largest city.

 The latest landslip occurred on the Mindima section of the highway and heavy vehicles are unable to negotiate the damaged area.

 InterOil Products Limited General Manager Peter Diezmann describes the situation as "grim".

 He says stocks of unleaded petrol (ULP) have run dry.

 "At the moment we are holding a mere 200 litres of ULP which is strictly reserved for use by emergency services.

 "Stocks of other fuels have reached the critical situation.

 "We currently have about two days supply of diesel.

 "Stocks of Jet A-1 at Kagamuga are dwindling quickly and will be exhausted by the end of the week", Mr. Diezmann said.

 Kerosene is the only fuel available in any quantity at InterOil's Dobel depot.

 "At the moment we are holding about 128,000 litres or three week supply".

 Mr. Diezmann said he sympathised with InterOil's many customers in the region who continue to live with the prospect of fuel shortages.

 "Fuel is the lifeblood of a city like Mount Hagen and when the fuel runs out many aspects of private, business and government life grind to a halt.

 "But until major repair works are carried out there is nothing we can do.

 Mr. Diezmann said that it was basically a safety issue.

 "To attempt to drive through the effected area would place the tanker drivers, the public and the environment at severe risk.

 "We can only hope the appropriate authorities will soon undertake major repairs on the Highway which is the major link between the Highlands and the coast."

 

 For further in formation

 

Susuve Laumaea

Senior Manager Media Relations - InterOil Corporation

Ph: 321 7040

Mobile: 684 5168

Email: susuve.laumaea@interoil.com  

 

National Research Institute's new infrastructure celebrates Port Moresby's building boom

The building boom in Port Moresby will be epitomised in Port Moresby on Thursday this week when the National Research Institute celebrates the official opening of the AusAID-funded, Australia-PNG Incentive Fund Infrastructure Development Programme (see pictures above). 

The infrastructure programme, which attracted funding of some K6.2 million, has boosted the Institute’s status to become the leading public policy research authority in Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Islands Region concerning policy-oriented issues and development trends.

“The Australia-PNG Incentive Fund Program is an historic milestone in infrastructure development for the Institute, since the opening of the original New Guinea Research Unit of the Australian National University in September 1968,” said NRI director Dr Thomas Webster,

“Those original buildings have been renovated as part of this development programme.

“It was a very difficult process obtaining approval for our project, as project funding submissions are very competitive, and many procedural and financial requirements and conditions had to be met.  

“As the infrastructure development now testifies, the institute was successful in its submission — which was the final approved project under AusAID’s current APNGIF program.”

The program comprises the following components:

•           A 280-seat conference centre, which incorporates a cafeteria and a bookshop;

•           A new administration building;

•           A new publications production centre, library extension, and publishing and IT   building;

•           Housing for visiting research fellows;

•           Renovated offices for NRI’s four research Divisions — Economics, Education, Political and Legal Studies, and Social and Environmental Studies;

•           Renovated existing library;

•           Renovated office-block for visiting researchers; and

•           Renovated Waigani Lodge, which is NRI’s eight-room, self-contained motel-type          units.

“The infrastructure has given the National Research Institute and its staff a morale boost as it has reorganised its research activities to provide greater public policy support to the government’s development initiatives, as set down in the Medium Term Development Strategy,” Dr Webster said. 

He expressed his gratitude to the following people and organisations for their input and dedication in making the infrastructure program a reality:

•           AusAID through the Australia-PNG Incentive Fund for approving and facilitating the project;

•           Paul Constable and his APNGIF team for their ongoing input and support;

•           Stanley Bala, the principal of Heduru Contractor Ltd, his supervisors and staff;

•           John Terence, the principal of Terence Kara Architects;

•           Ronald Napatalai, who was the project engineer;

•           The subcontractors and suppliers who provided the building materials and other services;

•           Logo Lotu, the programme manager, and his assistant, Ezekiel Brown; and

•           The NRI Project Management Team, who did the initial ground work leading up to the construction phase, and for their constant input during the construction of the various components of the infrastructure programme.

Evangelical Lutheran Church of Papua New Guinea goes online

The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Papua New Guinea now has the opportunity to evangelise through the Internet.

This follows the launch of the church’s website - http://www.elcpng.org.pg/ - last week which, among other things, will keep its members informed of activities within the ELCPNG.

The website contains details of the church’s history, events, education, health and other church-related activities and development programmes.

It was launched by acting Head Bishop Rev Zau Rapa last week.

“The website will introduce you to who we are, what we believe as a Christian denomination in PNG, and our ministries that puts out faith in action,” according to the home page.

“The ELC-PNG has a membership of over 1.2 million all throughout Papua New Guinea.

“This is approximately 20% of the total five million population of the country.

“The ELC-PNG anniversary day is celebrated on the 12th of July every year.

“This is the date when the pioneer missionary Rev Johannes Flierl first started his mission as a Lutheran pastor to reach to the people of Papua New Guinea in 1886

“Last year 2008, the Lutherans in PNG celebrated its 122 years of establishment.

“The official logo of the ELC-PNG shown above bears the hand of white man handing over the cross to a black man, the background image is the map of Papua New Guinea, and they are inside Luther's Rose.

“With Jesus Christ as the supreme head of ELC-PNG, we have three officials that look after and administer His work here: the Head Bishop, Assistant Bishop and General Secretary.

“ELC-PNG has 17 districts and seven departments.

“Districts are the regional settings of the Church throughout PNG whilst the department ministers the works that ELC-PNG serves God by providing to the people.”

 

A spectacular new palm species from the Sandaun povince, Papua New Guinea

Caption: The author Roy Banka with the new palm species discovered - longispadix Banka & Barfod sp.nov. – from Sandaun province

 

By ROY BANKA

 

NEW Guinea is one of the world’s greatest palm diversity hotspots with around 270 species, and the island is home to some of the most beautiful palms that thrive in the pristine and untouched rainforests.

Many of these palm species have great economic importance to rural communities in Papua New Guinea such as the coconut, betel nuts and other species which have great ornamental potential both within the country and internationally.

Although many New Guinea palm species are known scientifically, most species remain poorly known, as there is a lack of indigenous plant taxonomists and botanists who are working on documenting this great palm diversity that the island has.

The Palms of New Guinea Project (PONG) involves scientists from six different countries (United Kingdom, United States of America, Denmark, Australia, Indonesia and PNG), who have come together to explore and document this diverse palm flora of New Guinea, resulting in a number of new species being discovered and described in the past five to six years - one of such a discovery is presented here.

In 1999, the late Joseph Wiakabu from PNG Forest Research Institute (PNGFRI) and John Worimbangu from the Momase Area Office of the National Forest Service in Lae, Morobe province,  collected for the first time, an aberrant species of a Licuala around Green River in the Amanab area of the Sandaun province.

The specimen was presented to us at the Lae Herbarium and the collectors mentioned to us that it had a very long inflorescence that reached the forest floor.

From the height of the palm indicated on the label we deduced that the inflorescence was at least 4m long – the longest ever recorded of the genus!!!

 We checked with the measurements for the inflorescence length with experts in this group and discovered that this inflorescence length is much longer than the Licuala’s from Borneo, which is another centre of palm species diversity in the world – so we were so excited to go out and see for ourselves.

During one of our field campaigns organised within the framework of the PONG project we recollected the species along the banks of the Pual River near Vanimo again in the Sandaun province.

We described the species for the first time and named it Licuala longispadix Banka & Barfod sp.nov., which simply means the species Licuala with a very long inflorescence (spadix) and is named by Banka and Barfod and is in fact a new species (sp.nov. in Latin for “species nova” or “new species”).

The species is known from only two known localities in the Sandaun province where it is rare locally in lowland forest on alluvial plains dominated by species Intsia and Pometia.

This species of palm has a conservation status rating of “High Concern” as it has been recorded from only two localities in the Sandaun province, and from the type locality along the Pual River a careful search within a 100 m radius revealed only one individualand no regeneration, so the species has to be protected especially during any kind of forest clearance so that whatever population of the species in the area can be protected.

 

GPS used in teak breeding in Papua New Guinea

Captions: 1. Kuriva seed trees 2. PIP Project 2008 3. PIP Project 2008
TECTONA grandis or teak is one of the world’s premium timbers and fetches a very high price selling compared to other premium tree species such as kwila and taun.
The National Forest Service (NFS) has plans to establish additional major lowland teak plantations in the not-too-distant future.
Teak is not indigenous to Papua New Guinea but was introduced as early as the late 1800’s from South East Asia.
Teak from India is now known to be the best in the world, but to obtain seeds at present is difficult.
One of the scientific officers at PNG Forest Research Institute Gedisa Jeffery said during a site visit that  the NFS faced a serious threat domestically of vandalism, fire and illegal felling of candidate seed tree that could result in the gradual reduction of the genetic base of teak in PNG.
Mr Jeffery said that previous methods of marking candidate teak trees included the ring marking of trees with paints, steel tags and star pickets.
However, all these methods have failed over time,  due to natural or manmade conditions.
With the advancement in technology such as the  global positioning system (GPS),  it makes the job easier for scientist or technical officers to accurately pinpoint the exact location of selected teak trees in plantations, wood lots and trial sites making it easier to locate specific or marked trees.
A trial run on the GPS was put to test in the various teak sites in the Central province, East New Britain and Morobe to see if it wouldwork.
The testing opportunity to use GPS was under the International Tropical Timber Organisation (ITTO) project titled ‘Adding Value to Community Grassland’.
 “With help from the Forest Management Division and the Mapping Branch at the NFS headquarters, a team comprising of M Howcroft, Francis Vilamur, Constin Bigol and Ripa Karo went about to test the idea of using GPS on locating trees in specific sites,” Mr Jeffery said.
“The test was to prove if a candidate tree can be located once the exact location was recorded into GPS data”.
He added that once the GPS position for a selected candidate teak was recorded they could return to that particular tree in future to re-measure and collect seeds or vegetative plant parts to access the status of the tree.
With the GPS used in tree location,  it will be helpful for technical and scientific officers to locate the exact tree location to collect coppicing materials if the trees were felled or burnt down for record and data purposes.

How Papua New Guinea can learn from the Taiwan experience

Captions: The author on the observation deck on the 89^th Floor of the Taipei 101 in July 2007 2. Taipei 101 – the tallest building in the world.

 

A half-century ago, Taiwan was basically on the same boat that Papua New Guinea is on right now.

It was a resource-poor, under-developed tropical island.

Through sustained good policies over the past few decades, it has lifted its population from poverty, joining the ranks of the most-prosperous and competitive economies in the world.

Unlike Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and Hong Kong, it was able to weather quite unharmed the Asian financial crisis in 1997.

While advanced Asian countries have emphasised large corporate units, the Taiwanese economy is dominated by 97 per cent small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

While this might seem a disadvantage, the industry is structured in such a way that clusters of SMEs can service larger enterprises.

The entrepreneurial spirit generated by Taiwan’s difficult economic situation and lack or resources in earlier decades emphasised flexibility and cost-consciousness.

Taiwanese companies are accustomed to turbulent times and constant change, and expect to have to change products every six months.

This structure provides great flexibility and rapid response times, while allowing for a more human scale and stronger personal relationships within the companies.

Today, Taiwan is a technological powerhouse that ranks among the world’s top producers of notebook personal computers, flat panel displays, modems, motherboards and other electronic components and products.

In 2004 it ranked fourth globally in the production value of its IT hardware.

It was also fifth in the World Economic Forum’s 2005-2006 Global Competitiveness rankings, with a strong showing in the area of technology and innovation, ranking 3^rd in the world in the technology index.

The 2005-2006 Global Competitiveness Report highlights Taiwan’s exceptional strength in technology issues, including an impressive capacity for innovation, firm-level technology absorption, university/industry collaboration in research, and its pre-eminent position in the use of the latest technologies, from mobile phones to personal computers and the Internet.

Taiwan is indeed a model for countries, such as our Papua New Guinea, who are striving to improve their performance and competitiveness in information and communication technologies.

Taiwan’s transition from a poor agricultural society into an increasingly-sophisticated powerhouse of high-technology manufacturing and the world’s leading producer of information and communication technology products is, without doubt, one of the most-compelling development stories of the past half century.

However, as with all other countries that wish to maintain a competitive edge, the authorities will have to remain vigilant.

There is scope for further improvements in enhancing the quality of public institutions by increasing levels of transparency and openness.

Taiwan should in coming years aim to reach the standards of the Nordic countries in this area.

It has already matched their technological prowess.

Now it must reach their levels of efficiency in public sector management.

In his case study on Taiwan in the 2004-2005 Global Information Technology Report (Lin, 2005), FC Lin traces the evolution of Taiwan’s ICT industry through the first economic miracle of Taiwan’s transformation from an agricultural to an industrial economy (1953-1986), and describes the second miracle of its industrial restructuring (1987-2000), when low technology industries were forced to relocate overseas and were replaced by technology-intensive industries, particularly in the Information Technology sector.

In half a century, per capita GNP rose from US$196 to US$14,032.

Lin attributes these successes to the following factors:

• Strong government leadership in maintaining a high growth rate and a strong fiscal situation;
• Manpower development with a high level of science and technology graduates;
• The coalescing of high-tech clusters following the model of Silicon Valley;
• The development of venture capital supporting high-tech small and medium enterprises; and
• A highly-energetic private sector.

 

He identifies the future challenges as breaking into the advanced industrial and research areas of application integration, technical innovation, and standards formulation as global competition reduces profit margins.

Today, everyone recognises the economic challenge that mainland China represents for Taiwan.

With the rapid growth of the economy in mainland China, there are increasing business ties between the mainland and Taiwan, despite as yet unresolved issues on the political front.

Trade between the two is growing rapidly, and a large number of Taiwanese, perhaps up to a million, are now working in mainland China.

There is a high level of investment as well, now estimated at US$100 billion, as the mainland is the logical place for Taiwanese businesses to delocalise production that is no longer competitive in Taiwan, taking advantage of low land prices and cheap labour.

These strengthening trade, economic and business links will undoubtedly serve to create the conditions for a peaceful co-operative resolution of outstanding bilateral political issues.

 

We must keep our parks clean

I took my children for a stroll to the park at Gerehu Stage 2 in Port Moresby yesterday and was quite impressed at work on the new basketball court progressing well (pictured).
My kids went to play (pictured), while I sat on the grass, watching them play and taking pictures.
The concept of parks is a great one, long overdue in the national capital, by National Capital District Governor Powes Parkop.
However, what caught my attention was the amount of litter, mainly plastics, in the park.
Littering reflects the no-caring attitude of Papua New Guineans and this attitude has to stop.
We must be happy that we now have parks and recreational facilities for our children and do our bit by looking after them and keeping them clean.

Cry, the beloved country Papua New Guinea

Looking back all those years since 1975, I am now firmly of the view that independence came too early, much too early when Papua New Guinea wasn’t prepared.

We neglected our education and health systems and are now paying a high price for it with the numerous social problems in Papua New Guinea.

Pre-independence, and the early days of independence, there was still a strong colonial impact; strong missionary influence.

The came independence!

We did not have the capability to properly educate all our children, many of whom dropped out of school, and being unemployed, turn to a vicious never-ending circle of crime which continues to this day.

These people, being poorly educated, couldn’t properly educate their children and the problem passed on to the next generation.

We also did not have the capability to manage and improve our health services, which have degenerated over the years.

We are now paying a high price for the many years of neglect by the government and the prime minister – Sir Michael Somare – must now admit to the people of Papua New Guinea that he has just about destroyed us by fighting for early independence from Australia.

A nation’s prosperity is measured by the levels of education, health and general living conditions of its population at large.

All you have at present is a resilient majority as spectators of a politically-powerful and economically influential elitist minority who live in high price apartments and glass houses in exclusive Port Moresby and offshore locations.

The present education and health data in brief are:

 

Education

 

•           55% of people are illiterate;

•           50% of school aged children are not in school;

•           High drop out/low retention rate;

•           Lagging behind in teachers training.

 

 

Health

 

People are still dying from easily preventable and treatable diseases.

•           7,300 babies under 1 year die each day (20 per day);

•           10,200 babies under five years die (28 per day);

•           220,000 babies less than five years have no proper nutrition;

•           3,700 mothers die every day (10 mothers dying per day);

•           Half of all children in Papua New Guinea are not immunised;

•           60% of mothers not properly supervised when giving birth;

•           70% of people have no access to safe drinking water;

•           HIV/AIDS spread rapidly through Papua New Guinea over the last 10 years;

•           Over 14,000 confirmed HIV/AIDS cases;

•           Estimates of HIV/AIDS cases putting infection rate at 1-2% of population

Gender-based violence high in Papua New Guinea

PAPUA New Guinea has one of the highest prevalent rates of gender-based violence in the world, The National reports.

According to a statement by United Nations office in PNG, about 67% of women report experiencing family violence, and in some remote Highlands communities, this figure rises to a staggering 90%.

The report said that in the urban centres, around one in six wives report receiving hospital treatment for injuries inflicted on them by their husbands.

PNG will join the world in observing International Women’s Day today.

The day is aimed at raising public awareness of violence against women (VAW) and what people could do to end it.

This year’s theme is focused on a collective approach “Women and men: United to end violence against women”.

The report stated that PNG also has one of the highest rates of sexual violence in the world where nearly half of reported rape survivors are under the age of 15 and that13% were under the age of seven, and even then, most cases were not reported.

In light of the issue, one of the key features of the UN’s work on gender-based violence was to involve men in addressing gender-based violence through supporting the men’s forums on VAW and children.

The UN system in PNG also identified gender-based violence as one of its key advocacy areas and was also looking at tackling gender-based violence in all its programme activities.

UN resident coordinator in PNG, Dr Jacqui Badcock said that “affirmative action measures will help raise women’s profile so they would become active citizens in all sectors”, especially the areas of political participation and decision making.

“We need increased participation of women in key executive positions in both in the Government and private sectors who will ensure policy decisions and decision making are in line with efforts to achieve gender equality and development towards ending violence against women,” she added.

She said that the persistence of this problem was one of the major constraints to women’s economic and political leadership at all levels