Friday, August 28, 2009
Beautiful Simbu - Home in the clouds
This Japanese woman tourist with so fascinated with Simbu culture that she took off her clothes, got into traditional Simbu gear, and joined in a traditional singsingCheck out this new blog Beautiful Simbu – Home in the clouds (http://beautifulsimbu-homeintheclouds.blogspot.com/) which adds to the growing number of
The blog has been started by a Goroka, Eastern Highland province-based lecturer.
“The Simbu people live in the high mountain terrain of the Highlands of Papua New Guinea,” he writes.
“The countryside boasts some of the most-beautiful and breathtaking mountainous scenery, with fast-flowing rivers, creeks, and waterfalls.
Again, one needs to see it to believe.
“The capital is Kundiawa, a small town catering for almost half a million people.”
Eight-Mile Settlement breaks down the barriers
Youths from Eight-Mile Settlement.-Picture by SEAN DAVEYBut from this gloom and doom, despair and no hope disparagement, has come a silver lining to the dark cloud.
It is a powerful story of hope and inspiration that can bring down mountains and transform PNG into the better place we all dream of.
The Eight-Mile Settlement outside Port Moresby is setting the pace for other settlements in PNG by having its own photographic exhibition and establishing its own website which features heartwarming poems and stories written by its residents.
Eight-Mile Settlement is an interesting part of Port Moresby, and of PNG.
It is a 10-minute drive from Port Moresby International Airport.
The community of Eight-Mile Settlement welcomes visitors to come and see what life in a settlement is really like.
It is no secret that Port Moresby has a bad reputation as being a dangerous place to visit, and to live.
Settlement communities in Port Moresby are often especially regarded as notoriously-dangerous places.
However, settlement communities, including Eight-Mile Settlement, are first and foremost communities of people, living together as best they can, trying to work, feed their families, and survive, just like everyone else in the world.
The majority of residents in Eight-Mile Settlement live without power and running water.
There is one main water pipe that comes on twice a day, in the morning and in the evening, and this water supplies around 15,000 people with their daily water needs.
While living conditions in Eight-Mile Settlement are extremely basic, the community works together to promote a peaceful and harmonious environment in which people can live their lives and raise their families.
Most of the people who live in Eight-Mile Settlement come from the Highlands of PNG.
In the community at Eight-Mile they make gardens, and there are two markets where you can buy fresh, locally-grown produce for a fraction of what you might pay in the supermarket.
The exhibition with a difference, titled ‘Life in 8-Mile is Hard’ opened at the University of PNG last Saturday night, continued for all of this week and will next year be featured at the Monash Gallery of Art in Melbourne, Australia.
A difference in that it featured photographs by settlement youth who were taught and inspired by Australian professional photographer Sean Davey.
In what is believed to be a first for a settlement community in Papua New Guinea, Davey has also set up a website entirely devoted to the Eight-Mile Settlement, http://www.8milesettlement.com/ which showcases their photographs, writings, arts and crafts, paintings and lifestyle.
The photography exhibition that opened at UPNG was part of a gala evening that showcased the fruits of an arts education programme that was run at Eight-Mile Settlement from June 1-7 this year.
Funded by The Law and Justice Sector through AusAID, and facilitated by UPNG, the workshop attracted over 100 local youths from Eight-Mile Settlement each day the workshop was on.
The group was headed by UPNG theatre lecturer and Eight-Mile resident David Motsy.
The workshop focused on four main activities: painting, drama, music and story telling.
“Fruits of the workshop can be viewed at http://www.8milesettlement.com/ and also I believe that this website is the first in Papua New Guinea devoted entirely to a settlement community,” Mr Davey said.
“While I was facilitating at the workshop, I was photographing in the settlement and interviewing residents.
“Local boys would accompany me and help with introductions and translation.
“I gave them a small digital camera that I had in my camera bag and asked them to start using the camera to photograph as well.
“They really liked photographing and they passed the camera amongst themselves and made plenty of pictures of the settlement, including portraits, landscapes and close-ups.
“One youth, 17-year-old Emmanuel Onom Mel, in particular liked the camera and taking pictures a lot.
“He kept the camera and would photograph everything.
“He was very enthusiastic.
“I downloaded the photographs that the youths made and I was very impressed by the intuitive style in which they were working, photographing very candidly and freely.
“They were getting ‘real’ pictures of settlement life, compared to the more formal and posed photos that I, as an outsider, was making.”
Mr Davey showed a selection of Emmanuel's work, and other youths’, to the curator at the Monash Gallery of Art in Victoria, and he was very impressed by what he saw.
“On the basis of this, he offered to have an exhibition of my work, along with work done by Emmanuel, at the Monash Gallery of Art in February and March 2010,” he said.
Emmanuel Onom Mel, Wanpis Kaupa and Nathan Peter are three young men who have benefited tremendously from the workshop and want to lay the foundation for a better Eight-Mile Settlement and PNG.
Chatting with them over a cup of coffee this week made me realise that PNG has enormous untapped potential among our young people.
“This has been a very fruitful exercise because we had a lot of our young people at Eight-Mile involved,” Mr Kaupa beamed.
“These young people used to waste a lot of time on unproductive things like playing cards, drinking homebrew and smoking marijuana.
“What we have ventured into is something that no other settlement in PNG has done before.
“We have appeared on the front page of The National, have talked on radio and we now have our own website where people from all over the world can learn about us.”
Sean Davey, a bright and ambitious young photographer, says working with the youth of Eight-Mile has changed his outlook on life.
“They (youth) are saying ‘we’re not all drug bodies and thieves’,” he sparkles.
“Over the last two months, Eight-Mile has gone from nowhere to having its own website, appearing on the front page of The National and on the NBC.
“There’s an excitement at Eight-Mile now.
“For me, the biggest thing is breaking down the stereotype of settlements being ‘no-go’ zones.
“I hope that what we’re doing is breaking down the stigma.
“If you provide an opportunity, these guys will take anything that comes.
“These guys are willing to learn and participate.
“I know I’m going back to Cairns (Australia) a better person.”
Sean Davey can be contacted on email sean@pidgin.com.au.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Local Kokoda Trail operators form association to counter Aussie onslaught
An association has already been formed to further the interests of local
This follows recent allegations in the media that Australian-owned trekking companies operating along the Kokoda Trail were doing so illegally and cheating the governments of both
Ironically, Australian Aaron Hayes, who runs Ecotourism Melanesia, is spearheading moves to set up this association.
Mr Hayes said that lack of training, resources and lack of tech-savvy was all that was preventing locals from competing in the lucrative Kokoda trekking industry – PNG’s biggest tourism money spinner.
He also revealed how Australian operators were cheating the PNG Government of millions of kina in taxes.
“The Kokoda Trekking Operators Association (KTOPA) we have formed has plans to provide training and support to local operators,” he said.
“Trouble is, we have not been able to get any support from anybody yet.
“A meeting of the Kokoda Trekking Operators Association will be held at the Ecotourism Melanesia office this coming Sunday, Aug 30, at 2pm.
“The purpose of the meeting is to discuss a way forward for KTOPA now that Australian operators and some larger PNG operators have decided to form another association.”
Mr Hayes explained the association was set up with a constitution that specified that only PNG-based operators could be full members and Australian companies could be associate members without voting rights.
“This enables PNG operators to stay in control of the association,” he said.
“However, Australian companies don't want to join on this basis, and the larger PNG companies, who shall remain nameless, won't support it because they don't want more operators coming into competition with them.
“We asked Kokoda Track Authority to help us get a volunteer to further develop our operational plan and funding proposals to send to Tourism Promotion Authority and AusAID, but KTA didn't want to help.
“They say they only want to assist an association that represents all operators.
“This year, some Australian government projects along the track have become a concern to operators and the Australian operators decided they needed to quickly have an association in place to be the mouthpiece of trekking operators.
“Because of the long time it takes to incorporate an association, they decided to meet with KTOPA to find out if we could change our constitution to allow both PNG and Australian companies to be members with equal rights, and they also wanted the training and support programme for local operators to be scrapped from the operational plan, ie, they wanted to hijack the association for their own purposes.
“Max Kaso and I who are the interim committee would not allow this so they decided to set up a new association which will include Australian and PNG operators but no special help for locals.
“Apparently, this will be announced soon.
“Meantime, KTOPA will continue to pursue our goals separately, and we will soon be pushing the PNG government to provide some specific support to PNG operators.
“We would like to prepare a proposal for the PNG government to regulate the Kokoda trekking industry and limit the numbers of Australia-based operators and give more access and opportunities to local operators.
“For example, by legislation that requires all Australian operators to sub-contract their trekking logistics to a PNG company that is not a subsidiary of their Australian company, because if an Australian company registers itself in PNG it will still collect all its client payments in
“This means the PNG subsidiary will operate on break-even basis only, will never declare a profit, and will never pay company taxes to the PNG government.
“On the other hand, a 100% PNG-owned company will more likely declare a profit and pay tax.”
Landowners' high demands affect tourism
Major tour operator Ecotourism Melanesia will not be bringing any more Kokoda trekking groups via Popondetta / Buna / Gona until the problem with
This is because landowners are charging hugely-inflated prices up to K500 for a group of tourists just to cross the
The high prices are affecting the entire tourism industry in the area.
Ecotourism Melanesia director Aaron Hayes said while his trekkers were happy to cross the river on rubber tubes, the company could not sustain the high cost being charged by landowners for crossing the river.
“We are happy to pay the local boys a reasonable fee to assist our clients with crossing the river, eg K20 per person, and additional payment for rafting our gear across, but we cannot afford the high fees being charged by the landowners on top which is up to K500 per group,” he said.
“When the bridge was in operation, the landowners didn't charge people for crossing the bridge, so now that the bridge is gone and people are swimming across, we don't understand why the landowners are suddenly charging people to cross the same river by different means of transportation.
“What about people who fly across the river by plane or chopper, are the landowners also charging them for crossing?”
Mr Hayes said his company’s prices for trekking packages were set 18 months ago, based on anticipated costs, and allowing only a modest profit margin because the Kokoda trekking industry was now very competitive and it had to keep our prices as low as possible.
“Extra unexpected costs like these river crossing fees charged by landowners are not budgeted for in our trekking package, and we can't put our prices up halfway through the season, or ask our clients to pay more after they have already pre-paid for their trekking package many months ago,” he said.
“Therefore, our only option is to either pay these unreasonable fees out of our profit margin - which then makes the trek package uneconomical to operate via Popondetta - or re-route all our groups direct to Kokoda and skip Popondetta.
“If they can make the river crossing costs reasonable, then we can still keep operating via Kumusi and pay them something, but if they maintain these high fees we must stop operating via Popondetta and the Kumusi people will get nothing at all from us.”
New online Pacific media service launched
A partnership between Scoop Media and AUT’s Pacific Media Centre, Pacific Scoop is hosted on the existing Scoop website (www.scoop.co.nz).
The new site provides up-to-date news stories about Maori, Pasifika and ethnic diversity issues written by student journalists with support from experienced editors, reporters and commentators.
Contributors will include students from AUT’s School of Communication Studies, the
Manning said today: "The Pacific Scoop hub provides AUT's journalism students and staff a place to foot it with other practising journalists and respected commentators around the region. I'm looking forward to seeing this project grow in popularity and focus on major Pacific issues.”
Dr David Robie, director of
He says the service introduces a fresh and independent voice of the greater Pacific.
“We are keen to tell the hidden stories and address important Pacific issues like climate change, human rights and resource development,” says Dr Robie. “Pacific Scoop allows us to highlight important Pacific issues, while also showcasing student journalism.
“The site will provide a great resource for journalists and members of the public who are interested in detailed and up-to-date information about what is happening in the Pacific.”
Pacific issues have had prominence on the Scoop website since it was launched in 1999.
But Alastair Thompson, Scoop’s co-editor and co-founder, says the launch of Pacific Scoop will enhance the website’s Pacific coverage.
“This partnership will greatly increase our capacity to deliver news and commentary from the Pacific at a time when reporting resources in the Pacific are under great strain,” says Thompson.
· Contact:
Assoc Prof David Robie,
Editor, Pacific Scoop www.pacific.scoop.co.nz
drobie@aut.ac.nz , 021 112 2079
* Comment on this item www.pacificmediacentre.
ABAC urges dialogue on regulatory capital changes, fiscal reforms
Issued by the APEC Business Advisory Council
Meeting in
In a letter urging APEC Finance Ministers to communicate its views to the G-20, ABAC recommended that such changes be undertaken in dialogue with the private sector. In addition, they should form part of a comprehensive financial reform package that addresses risk management and corporate governance practices, among others.
ABAC also urged governments to carefully implement and coordinate exit strategies from emergency fiscal and monetary measures taken in response to the crisis, in view of their huge scale and impact on the real economy and financial markets.
The Council reiterated its firm and continued support for the work of the G-20 on financial reforms. ABAC expressed its satisfaction with current efforts to promote activity-based regulation and central clearinghouses for credit default swaps, which it proposed in its previous report.
ABAC members will discuss these and other recommendations during their dialogue with finance ministers and leaders of APEC’s 21 member economies this coming November in
About ABAC
ABAC was established by the APEC Economic Leaders in November 1995 in response to a call for a private sector body that could advise them on matters of primary importance to business in the region. It brings together up to three business leaders from each of APEC’s 21 economies.
For more information, please contact:
Mr. Martin Yuoon, ABAC Executive Director 2009 at (65) 6827-6886 or at mkhyuoon@sbf.org.sg
Mr. Antonio Basilio, ABAC Secretariat at (632) 845-4564 or at abacsec@pfgc.ph
Mr. Naoki Sawaoka, ABAC’s FEWG Lead Staffer 2009 at (813)3240-7264 or at naoki_sawaoka@mufg.jp