PNG Coffee Festival & Trade Fair makes a comeback

The hugely-successful PNG Coffee Festival & Trade Fair makes a comeback in May this year after a year’s lay-off due to the 2007 national elections.

Founder and president Norman Carver (pictured left with co-ordinator Genevieve Roberts) made the announcement.

“As the president of the PNG Coffee Festival & Trade Fair Inc, it is with great pleasure that I announce that the 2008 event will be staged on the 8th, 9th and 10th May this year in Goroka,” he said.

“The PNG Coffee Festival has truly become a unique event in PNG.

“This has been achieved through the successful partnering of agriculture, tourism, business and government for the common good of promoting social and economic life in the region.

“The event purposefully targets children and school students because the future progression of Papua New Guinea will become the responsibility of this young generation of Papua New Guineans.

“Coffee is lifeblood of the people that live along the Highlands Highway.

“ The coffee industry has become the backbone of the Highland’s economy and generates income for many individuals therefore we continue to promote Coffee as the No. 1 economic activity in the Highlands due to its long successful association with the people of this region.”

The festival is expected to attract in excess of 20, 000 people with more receiving the Coffee Festival message through an extensive media publicity campaign.

Organisers are also expecting an increase in exhibitor and singsing group participation this year as well.

The main event and trade Fair will be held at the Raun Raun Theatre with traditional sing sing groups, cultural performances, and an art s crafts market,” Mr Carver said.

“Coinciding events include an art exhibition, a night show at the University of Goroka and the Coffee Festival Ball at the Pacific Gardens Hotel.”

For more information or to participate in the PNG Coffee Festival & Trade Fair please contact festival administrator Ms Genevieve Roberts on telephone 732 1703, facsimile 732 3302 or email info@easternhighlands.com.pg

How Taiwan is bridging the digital divide

Taiwan is world-renowned for manufacturing computers, and it also tops the list of countries surveyed in e-readiness rankings by several international organisations.

But these facts do not mean that no digital divide exists on this island country.

The digital divide is a phenomenon that exists all over the world, including in more-developed countries.

In response to the growing global concern for digitally-disadvantaged groups, the Taiwan government launched a campaign to bridge the digital divide, not only in Taiwan but in other countries such as Papua New Guinea as well.

The ‘Bridging SME Digital Divide Project’ is an important project of the Small and Medium Enterprise Administration, Ministry of Economic Affairs, Taiwan, aiming to help small enterprises with under 20 employees embrace ecommerce.

The second one is called ‘Narrowing the Digital Divide between Urban and Rural Areas’, and the third is called ‘Asia-Pacific Digital Opportunities Centres (ADOC).

The ADOC programme aims at helping less-developed APEC member economies such as Papua New Guinea address the digital divide

Thanks to progress in information technology and popularity of the Internet, the threshold for small and medium enterprises to introduce e-commerce has become lower, but how to let business owners identify with and personally experience the benefits of e-business poses a major challenge for the promotion of the project.

Fortunately, under the mobilisation of the Information Service Industry Association of the Chinese Taipei, which is responsible for the execution of the project under the commission of the administration, and 21 municipal computer industry associations, staff of the 12 SME e-business assisting teams and over 1,000 information service providers have approached renowned scenic spots and remote townships to promote e-commerce painstakingly among business owners.

Their efforts have successfully encouraged tens of thousands of small business owners to make the small e-step, allowing them to begin experiencing the power of e-commerce in creating business opportunities.

From its inception in 2005, the project has assisted 16,000 small enterprises to establish Broadband Internet access and 32,000 small enterprises to embrace e-commerce, helping them to create over NT$2 billion in business opportunities and bringing business worth over NT$800 million to information service providers.

The ‘Bridging the Digital Divide of the SME Project’ aims at enabling hundreds of thousands of Taiwan micro businesses to use the Internet and e-commerce in their business operations.
This project is sponsored by the Small and Medium Enterprise Administration, Ministry of Economic Affairs, Chinese Taipei.

There are 982,000 registered business entities in Taiwan, 94% of which employ less than 20 employees.

Although Broadband Internet penetration has reached most rural areas and subscription fees are generally affordable by households and businesses, most of these micro businesses are still not active or sophisticated users of information technology and the Internet compared to larger businesses.

Answering to the needs of the vast numbers of micro businesses, the government has staged a nationwide campaign to significantly bridge the digital divide to these underprivileged citizens and businesses.
In addition to the many impressive statistics that illustrate the success of the project, behind the figures are also many touching stories of Taiwanese small businessmen and women who have successfully integrated themselves and their business into today’s digital economy.

For instance, in Central Taiwan, Kukun village is known as the only place in Taiwan for growing coffee.

The original coffee tree seeds were brought to Taiwan by the Dutch from Indonesia about 200 years ago.

On weekends, Kukun is overwhelmed with visitors to the coffee shop, buying coffee beans and souvenirs.

But on weekdays, Kukun turns into a ghost town.

Most coffee shops and souvenir stores are closed and many men and women are idle for five days out of the week.

One of the digital heroes, Mr Ma-Cheng Lin, operates a coffee shop at Kukun.

By chance, he was asked to participate in this project.

As the opinion leader in the village, he convinced other villagers to join the project to form an e-cluster.

This e-cluster has 10 members who share a common website, named, ‘The Legend of the Black Gold’.

In their minds, Kukun coffee is like black gold which brings them fortune.

The 10-member cluster with an average age of 52 started to learn how to key in text, take digital pictures and upload them to their website.

Under the leadership of Mr Lin, who has considerable technical knowledge, the group convenes every week to discuss how to improve the look and content of the website.

A few weeks after the website was launched, Mr Lin finished his coffee baking on a weekday to find a message send to the website, asking to deliver one kilogramme of baked coffee beans with payment already wired to his account.

He could not believe that a customer he had never met would wire cash to his account before the merchandise was delivered.

The email orders kept coming for Mr Lin and other members of the cluster from the website.
Now, on weekdays, they are busy with packing the orders, arranging deliveries and answer growing enquiries from the website.

“I thought those coffee orders were dropped from Heaven,” Mr Lin described of his first experience with e-commerce.

mnalu@thenational.com.pg or SMS 6849763.

How PNG can learn from the Taiwan ICT experience

A COUPLE of days ago, I received an email from a former The National colleague now studying in mainland China, Mathew Yakai.Mathew wrote to seek some advice on writing and I was more than happy to oblige.

He also wanted access to articles on my two trips to Taiwan last year; however, because of stringent Chinese Internet censorship he wasn’t able to access my Blog.

I then trod on his toes when I asked him what he was trying to prove by writing a weekly column on Sino-Taiwan relations in the weekly Sunday Chronicle.

I bluntly told him that this was a very-sensitive international relations matter which would best be left to politicians.

We got into a bit of an argument, however, still remain good friends.Anyway, for the benefit of Mathew and the many readers of this column, 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 3rd 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.

* mnalu@thenational.com.pg or SMS 6849763

In Touch Media raises K85, 000 for flood victims

Lae-based local company In Touch Media Limited, in conjunction with its subsidiary FM Morobe 94.7 Radio Station, raised more than K85,000 in both cash and kind for the flood-devastated people of Oro through the 'Hands across the Land – Oro Appeal'.

In Touch Media and its subsidiaries including In Touch Multimedia Productions, Power Haus Records, In Touch Events and FM Morobe went on a 90-hour around-the- clock fundraising drive from last December 14 to December 17.

The initiative was part of In Touch Media’s community service that entailed mobilising corporation as ordinary residents of Lae city and Morobe province gave a helping hand to wantoks in Oro.

In Touch Media general manager, Lady Nohoranie Bogan, said: “The ‘Hands across the Land-Oro Appeal’ is the second for the local radio station, FM Morobe, following the ‘Asian Tsunami Appeal’ in 2004.

“The ‘Hands Across the Land –Oro Appeal’ was a success as it showed that there was compassion in people, especially ordinary people, who made up much of the FM Morobe 94.7 listenership and gave whatever little to the appeal.

“Donations poured in from a diverse group of people including churches, families, middle income workers, betel nut sellers and children who walked in from the street to contribute.”

Lady Nohoranie said the total raised in both cash and kind from business houses and the general public was K85, 241.62 and this was now in the trusted hands of St Andrews Local Parish in Oro for distribution.

“Shipment of the goods was made possible by Consort Shipping Lines,” she said.

“The donations included: one bale of 50 mosquito nets, three suitcases of assorted clothing, nine rainbow bags of assorted clothing, 180 boxes of clothes, two boxes of kitchen utensils, eight bales of assorted clothing, eight bales of assorted footware, 34 dozen garden items and 36 bales of 50 kg rice bags.

“The appeal was launched by the Secretary of the Anglican Church of Papua New Guinea and supported by Deputy Secretary for Foreign Affairs and Oro’s very own Ambassador Lucy Bogari.

“In Touch Media management acknowledges the following for their support in making the ‘Hands across the Land - Oro Appeal’ a success: Anglican Church of PNG, Ambassador Lucy Bogari and the Eroro community in Port Moresby, Lae police for their constant security presence throughout the appeal, numerous companies and business houses for their support in kind and the faithful listeners of FM Morobe and individual families, churches, organisation, community groups and the ordinary people of Morobe province.

“The donations were transshipped free of charge by Consort Shipping to Father Gombera of the Anglican Parish in Oro Bay and distributed to care centres at Eroro/Oro Bay, Gona/Kurou, and Emo.”

How the Taiwanese government is assisting SMEs in ICT

Taiwan is a good example of a government that is really going out of its way to help Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the field of Information and Communications Technology (ICT).

I visited Taiwan two times last year and had the chance to see for myself and study how the Taiwanese government is assisting its SMEs.

“So long as you are willing to make the e-step, a shrimp can be equal to a whale,” are the words of Sun-Quae Lae, director-general of SME Administration with the Taiwanese government.

Under the auspices of the ‘Bridging SME Digital Divide Project’, around 50,000 small and medium enterprises have boarded the e-business bandwagon, creating infinite business opportunities online.

The’Bridging the Digital Divide of the SME Project’ is an important project of the Small and Medium Enterprise Administration, Ministry of Economic Affairs, aiming to help small enterprises with under 20 employees embrace e-commerce.

Thanks to progress in information technology and popularity of the Internet, the threshold for small and medium enterprises to introduce e-commerce has become lower, but to let business owners identify with and personally experience the benefits of e-business poses a major challenge for the promotion of the project.

Fortunately, under the mobilisation of the Information Service Industry Association of the ROC, which is responsible for the execution of the project under the commission of the administration, and 20 municipal computer industry associations, staff of the 12 SME e-Business assisting teams and over 1,000 information service providers have approached renowned scenic spots and remote townships to provide e-commerce painstakingly amongst business owners.

Their efforts have successfully encouraged tens of thousands of small business owners to make the small e-step, allowing them to begin experiencing the power of e-commerce in creating business opportunities.

From its inception in 2005, the project has assisted 16,000 small enterprises to establish Broadband Internet access and 32,000 small enterprises to embrace e-commerce, helping them to create over NT$2 billion in business opportunities and bringing business worth over NT$800 million to information service providers.

Successful and touching episodes abound in the assisting process.

An assisting team, for instance, stepped into the tea business clustered in the mountainous village of Pinglin, helping its tea shops solicit online the return of customer groups, who left following the inauguration of the Snow Mountain Tunnel.

Broadband access has cemented consensus among 10-odd stores in the Aboriginal homeland of Taian village in Miaoli County, whose owners learned computer usage together and successfully landed orders online.

A physically-challenged business owner posted his scuba-diving photos and writings on his experience of the sport on his website, thereby finding many other scuba-diving enthusiasts and customers.

Via the assistance of the project, many people formed into e-clubs, discussing website design together, practicing to use digital cameras for taking and posting commodity photos, and gathering to celebrate the miracles of receiving orders for products or reservations for homestays online from various corners.

E-commerce benefits for small and medium enterprises may not be the most eye-catching and the extent of their e-operations may not be at the highest level.

Their innovative spirit and enthusiasm for personal experience, however, embodies the persevering feature of the 1.22 million Taiwanese SMEs in the face of challenge.

Money is not a problem and technology not a barrier, so long as business owners are willing to take the e-step.

SMEA and the assisting teams would help them achieve business takeoff.

In the foreseeable future, such successful stories will be repeatedly played out in Taiwan, making the industrial digital divide a historical footnote.

“After two years of trial and exploration,” Mr Lai said, “I am glad to take part in the project team, not only having achieved all the goals listed by the project but also grasping the essence for the direction of assisting works, in addition to sophisticated techniques for the execution of the project.

“Therefore, I would like to take the opportunity to express my gratitude for the input and contribution of the Information Service Industry Association of the ROC and the 12 e-operation assisting teams.

“The project has won the ‘e-commerce Ultra-excellence award for the Government Category’ of the e-Asia award, sponsored by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, in 2006, and represented Taiwan in the 2006 APEC e-Asia Awards contest, which underscores the largest confirmation of the efforts brought on by the efforts of the related parties.”

Cromwell Sustainable Coffee Ltd helps Kabwum growers

Kabwum Valley is in the Huon Peninsula, 115km north-east of Lae, Morobe province.

The valley is surrounded by the scenic Cromwell Mountains on the north-east and Saruwaget Ranges on the north-west end.

Both contain large alpine and rain forests with high biodiversity and wildlife sanctuaries.

Coffee farms are scattered on the foothills of both ranges stretching coastward towards Wasu port.

Ideally, Wasu port handles all coffee moved out of Kabwum Valley.

Coffee was introduced to Kabwum Valley by early missionaries in 1950’s.

Komba, Timbe, Selepet and Urua/Yopna tribesmen - who make up the population of Kabwum - grow this very important cash crop intercropping with taro, banana and other tree crops with no chemical fertilisers.

Currently, 100% of coffee is sold as “conventional” to agents representing major exporters in Lae, Morobe province and Goroka, Eastern Highlands province.

With the closure of Wasu Kabwum coffee mill in 1998, coupled with the constant changes in New York “C” coffee prices, these agents took advantage and paid less than New York “C” prices to the growers, taking large slices for themselves or their processors and exporters.

Lack of transportation and communication infrastructure added to the worsening situation for Kabwum coffee growers.

They struggled to make a living from this most-important cash crop, and most growers abandoned their villages and drifted into urban centres.

These are the producers of the second most-traded commodity in the world.

Out of this structural inequality in Kabwum’s coffee industry, Cromwell Sustainable Coffee (CSC) Ltd was born on August 23, 2005, under the IPA Business Registration Act 1997, and commenced operation in October, 2005.

The main objective has been to act as organic operator under the standards of National Association for Agriculture Australia (NASAA), a third-party organic certifier based in Adelaide, Australia, to assist smallholder coffee growers develop and promote the certification, production and marketing of certified smallholder grown organic coffee from Kabwum.

Cromwell Sustainable Coffee Ltd is headed by Ferro Muga as managing director.

Mr Muga holds a degree in Bachelor of Science (food technology) from Unitech, Lae.

He graduated from the University in 1982 and joined Ramu Sugar Ltd.

During his 22 years of service (1983 – 2005), he has held many senior positions, the latest being distillery manager managing the Ramu Sugar ethanol processing plant.

“CSC, acting as organic operator under NASAA standards, has initiated this organic coffee venture because, although the smallholder growers grow coffee with no synthetic chemical fertilisers, they cannot be considered for market certification purposes because many countries now regulate organic coffee trade,” Mr Muga explained.

“ To sell coffee as organic, the producers and processors must work within and be certified by certification bodies most often according to the standards that meet or exceeds the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movement – IFOAM - basic standards.

“This requires a system of regular inspection and certification that helps to ensure the credibility of organic coffee and help build trust in the market place.

“NASAA is accredited by IFOAM.”

As a guideline the following international rule s apply:
Coffee sold as organic to the US must be certified by USNOP (United States National Organic Program);
Coffee sold as organic to EU must meet the EU Standard 45011 Regulation;
Coffee sold as organic to Japan must be certified by JAS or deemed equivalent to JAS (Japanese Agriculture Standards); and
IFOAM – International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movement. An over-arching international body that accredits certification organisations and sets standards for organic coffee certification.

“Initially, CSC has committed its finances to purchase parchment coffee from growers and re-sell to exporters in Lae to generate funds to embark on the organic coffee venture,” Mr Muga said.

“There are 30 grower groups (villages) within the operational area each with an organic inspector and an assistant.

“The membership is approximately 3, 500 and still growing.

“The volume of coffee is about 12, 500 bags of 50kg parchment coffee - 3.6 bags per grower.”

CSC has provided the following services to its members:

Farmer registration;
Mapping of coffee growing areas;
Inspection of coffee farms and;
Provide technical advice on rehabilitation of coffee plots and quality control of cherry picking and processing, hence, preparation of good quality parchment coffee; and
Set up internal organic control system to facilitate organic inspection/verification.

Apart form a core business of coffee, CSC has embarked on two community-related projects as follows:

Coffee for Books (CfB) elementary education programmes to address child literacy in the coffee growing communities; and
Community electronic network by way of VSAT stations in several key locations in Kabwum District. It is in planning stage.

“To date, most of CSC’s coffee has been sold to New Guinea Coffee Tea & Spices Ltd, Lae, and New Guinea Highlands Coffee Ltd, Goroka, under green bean contracts,” Mr Muga said.

A PNG success story on the Internet

Fuzzy Wuzzy Expeditions, a 100% Papua New Guinea-owned trekking company, is the new kid on the block that’s taking the Kokoda Trail by storm through the Internet.

It’s a far cry from early 2004 when I first met an enterprising young man named Defol Jabbar(pictured second from left, back row, with a group of trekkers and porters along the Kokoda Trail).

He had just set up his new trekking company and the next three years would be a steep learning curve.

Mr Jabbar has slowly but steadily been building up his client base since 2004, albeit, without a professionally-designed website.

His website http://www.fuzzywuzzy.com.pg/ was properly designed and uploaded last November and the sky is now the limit.

Mr Jabbar, as far as I know, is the first Papua New Guinean owner of a trekking company to have a proper website.

Many overseas trekkers and tourists prefer to use 100% locally-owned companies; however, the catch is that few of these companies are Internet-savvy.

The lucrative Kokoda Trail market is dominated by foreign-owned companies, many of whom use Papua New Guineans as fronts, and Fuzzy Wuzzy Expeditions is indeed a breath of fresh air.

It has already secured major corporate clients such as SP Brewery and Telikom, while the number of site visits and hits increases by the day.

The situation for many Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) all over the world, including Papua New Guinea, is that an entrepreneur (such as Mr Jabbar) owns a small or medium enterprise.

The company produces an interesting product such as organic coffee or arts and crafts, or provides a novel service such as taking tourists across the Kokoda Trail.

The problem: How do we use the Internet to sell the product or service?

The general methodology is to plan, analyse and enact E-marketing activities.

This methodology can be used by anyone who wants to use the Internet to access customers.

Components include:
• Goals – What do we wish to achieve through E-marketing?
• Resources – What resources can we expect to support our actions?
• Actors – Who are the marketing actors in the E-marketing process?
• Spaces – Where will our E-marketing take place online?
• Actions – What specific E-marketing actions should we take?
• Outcomes – What outcomes should we expect from our E-marketing activities

“We started in 2004,” Mr Jabbar says.

“I got clients on an ad hoc basis.

“My biggest problem was setting up a website.

“At the end of the last trekking season, I felt that I had to build up a proper website.

“I’m the first local operator on the Kokoda Trail to have a proper website.

“There are about 20-30 operators, all of them foreign-owned, who have their own websites.

“There are only a few local operators, and of these, I’m the only one to have a website.

“Since the website was uploaded last November, there have been a lot of visits.

“Without a website, I found it very hard to get clients.

“Now that the site is up and running, I have been receiving a lot of querries.

“Everyday, I get about 10-15 querries from interested people and trekkers, who want to make bookings for 2008.

“As a local operator, my prices are very competitive.

“My prices are very cheap.

“I regard this as a very big achievement in my life as well as my own small business.

“I also utilise the website to sell whatever I can to people overseas, such as the Ghost Mountain

Trail (between Gabagaba in Central province and Buna in Oro province).

“I can also sell other tourism products from the Oro province on the website.

“We are also looking at selling products from other provinces.”

Mr Jabbar is proud that corporate icons such as SP Brewery and Telikom are utilising the services of his company.

In fact tomorrow, Saturday, January 19, Fuzzy Wuzzy Expeditions will be taking senior Telikom managers for a one-day “Kokoda Taster” from Owers Corner to Imita Ridge, returning the next day.

“We are preparing to attract corporate companies in Port Moresby to encourage their employees to participate," Mr Jabbar said.

“SP Brewery is the first company to support us as a local operator.

“They have already done two Kokoda treks, one in May 2007, and the other in October 2007.

“The general manager of SP Brewery and all his top managers did the trek.

“They have three more treks coming up this year.

“We thank them for their support.

“Telikom is taking the ‘Kokoda Taster’ on the 19th of January.

“Telikom PNG has five ‘Kokoda Tasters’ this year.

“They want to get all their employees involved in this programme to get them fit, healthy and sharp-minded.

“They are also planning two or three major treks in 2008.

“On these treks, they’ll also be looking at setting up their telecommunications network along the trail.”

Mr Jabbar was a banker before being bitten by the tourism bug.

“After I left the bank, I was mayor of Popondetta,” he recalls.

“I walked as the research officer for (former Oro MP) Peter Oresi.

“I saw the potential for tourism in Kokoda and decided to get into the business.

“I set up the company in January 2004.

“Now that I have a website, I think that I’ll do better in 2008.

“I’m now looking at the possibility of building a guesthouse in Kokoda.

“I have already obtained a piece of land in Kokoda for this purpose.
“I’m expecting a lot of trekkers for ANZAC DAY.”

Mr Jabbar can be contacted on email http://us.f529.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=defol@fuzzywuzzy.com.pg or http://us.f529.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=info@fuzzywuzzy.com.pg and mobile 6883231.

http://us.f529.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=mnalu@thenational.com.pg or SMS 6849763.