Coffee farmers from
Owena in the remote Obura-Wonenera district of Eastern Highlands province loading
parchment coffee bags onto a Missionary Aviation Fellowship (MAF) plane to take
to Aiyura
Parchment coffee bags
being unloaded from an MAF plane at Aiyura airstrip, owned and operated by the
Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL)
By AUGUSTINE DOMINIC of CIC
The volume of coffee being air freighted into major markets in Goroka and Kainantu from very remote areas in the Eastern Highlands and SimbuProvinces is expected to double this year with the Freight Surety Scheme (FSS) of the Coffee Industry Corporation.
Since the demise of the renowned ‘green revolution’ in 2002, which pledged much hope for improved air freighting of coffee from remote areas into major markets in towns, the re-conceived FSS concept is picking up momentum and has gained much popularity among remote farmers.
CIC’s FSS officer Paul Gilma said that the scheme was developed in 2003 after the fall of the ‘green revolution’ and till 2009, the scheme had airfreighted over 760, 000 kg (about 15, 000 bags) of parchment coffee from various remote areas of the two provinces.
The total volume airlifted in 2009 from remote areas like Pinero, Negabo, Nomane, Karamui, and Appa in Chimbu and Maimafu, Andakombe, Simbari, Tuvau, Marawaka, and Owena in Eastern Highlands provinces was 52, 663kg and he predicted that with much awareness of the scheme, the volume would reach 90, 000 kg this year.
Gilma said there was more volume of coffee being airfreighted out from the remote areas into towns but the volumes revealed were only the figures of CIC recorded through the FSS programme.
“The overall objectives of the FSS is to provide effective and efficient coffee freight program to promote, support and develop a sustainable coffee industry in PNG which will maximise financial returns to all coffee producers and contribute to the government’s economic and social policy goals focusing on rural development and poverty alleviation”, he said.
He said more government funding would be needed to boost the provision of this much-needed service to other coffee-growing provinces in PNG because currently, the limited funding available was only being recycled in EHP and Simbu provinces.
Gilma said farmers in Morobe and Madang province were advised to approach the CIC office in their provinces to access the coffee freighting service because some money had already been deposited with North Coast Aviation and Islands Airways operating respectively in each province to serve them.
He explained that the freight scheme paid the freight cost upfront for the farmers and once the farmers sold their coffee they only repaid the freight cost and get remainder.
“Many farmers have expressed great satisfaction for the freight service provided by CIC than similar service provided by private organisations and individuals, as they gain more income,” Gilma said.
INTEROIL Corporation announced on Wednesday, August 4, that a Joint Venture Operating Agreement ("JVOA") for the Company's proposed Condensate Stripping Plant ("CSP") has been finalised with Mitsui & Co., Ltd. ("Mitsui").
The JVOA sets out the rights and obligations of the participants of the joint venture to develop a CSP at InterOil's Elk and Antelope field site in Gulf Province,Papua New Guinea.
The JVOA replaces the preliminary joint venture works agreement announced inApril 2010.
InterOil and Mitsui also executed an Option Deed. After reaching final investment decision on the CSP, Mitsui has options to acquire interests of up to a 5% in the Elk and Antelope fields and in the liquefied natural gas (LNG) Project on equal terms, yet to be determined, to those agreed with a future industry partner, as follows:
1.After mechanical completion of the CSP, Mitsui has a right to convert its contributed investment in the CSP into a 2.5% interest in the Elk and Antelope fields and the proposed LNG Plant.
2.Mitsui also has conditional rights under a separate call option to purchase an additional 2.5% interest in the Elk and Antelope fields and the proposed LNG Plant.
Certain regulatory approvals will be required from the Papua New GuineaState for the options to be effective.
Joint Venture Operating Agreement
Under the JVOA, InterOil and Mitsui will each have a 50% ownership stake, before theState of Papua New Guinea's statutory right to acquire up to 22.5% in the CSP. An InterOil subsidiary is the operator under the joint venture. InterOil expects that the CSP will be designed to process approximately 400 million standard cubic feet per day (mmscf/day) of wellhead gas with an anticipated yield of approximately 9,000 barrels (bbls) of condensate per day. Dry gas may be reinjected into the reservoir for storage depending on the timing of the development of the proposed LNG Plant. The condensate is expected to be barged to the InterOil refinery inPort Moresbyfor processing and sale.
The wells and condensate transport from the CSP (located approximately 30 km southwest of the fields adjacent to the PurariRiver) will be the responsibility of the owners of the Elk and Antelope fields, including InterOil and its upstream partners. The capital cost for the CSP is currently estimated at$550 million, with approximately$32 millionof this being expended for front end engineering design. Mitsui will be responsible for arranging or providing financing for the capital costs of the plant.
Final Investment Decision by the JVOA partners is expected by the end ofMarch 2011, following completion of engineering and design work, financing agreements and further regulatory approvals. The CSP facilities are projected to be operational no later than mid-2013. In the event that a positive Final Investment Decision is not reached or made, InterOil will be required to refund Mitsui's capital expenditure incurred within a specified period and the option and conversion deeds will be terminated.
Phil Mulacek, Chief Executive Officer of InterOil, commented: "Since April, front end engineering and design studies have been ongoing and we have now concluded certain definitive agreements with Mitsui for the CSP and Mitsui's right to acquire up to 5% in the Elk and Antelope fields and the proposed LNG project. We welcome Mitsui as our partner, and are very pleased with the progress made in the development of our CSP, which we expect will enable us to monetise our Elk and Antelope liquid resources. This is a key step in the monetisation of our natural gas resources through LNG."
TEARS flowed freely during the funeral service of the late Sir Brian Bell at the St Martin’s Anglican Church in Port Moresby yesterday.
More than 1,000 people, including family members, friends, senior management and staff of the Brian Bell Group of Companies, dignitaries, heads of businesses, departmental heads and members of the diplomatic corps, who have been touched in one way or the other by the generosity of Sir Brian, flooded the church to bid him farewell.
Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare and Governor-General Sir Paulias Matane, opposition leader Sir Mekere Morauta, Mining Minister John Pundari and Abau MP Sir Puka Temu were also there to pay their respects.
Former prime ministers Paias Wingti and Sir Rabbie Namaliu also attended the funeral service.
Branch managers of the Brian Bell group from Kokopo, Mt Hagen, Lae and Goroka also attended the funeral service on behalf of their staff.
Most noticeable was the build-up of everyday people, men and women from the informal sector, outside the church grounds yesterday.
Some of these people wept openly when the casket containing the remains of Sir Brian was taken out for its journey to the 9-Mile cemetery for burial.
One could only wonder how the late veteran businessman might have touched the lives of these individuals.
The church was filled to capacity and extra tents were erected outside the church grounds to accommodate some of the staff members and beneficiaries of his many good deeds.
The funeral programme was broadcast live on Kundu 2 Television.
Well-wishers arrived at the church well before 9am to say goodbye.
A sudden hush overcame the group of well-wishers as the casket carrying Sir Brian’s body arrived at the church at 11am at the sound of police sirens.
Oro dancers from Northern welcomed the casket as they shouted “Oro, Oro, Oro”, to the late Sir Brian.
This was followed by the reflective sound of the bagpipes by the Correctional Services band that accompanied the casket into the church.
Most fitting was the farewell song by Marina Prior, daughter of Sir Brian’s friend, Grand Prior in dedication to him.
The ceremony lasted about two hours before the body was transferred for burial.
At around 3pm, Sir Brian, the man who touched countless lives through his generosity, humility, honesty, commitment and hard work was finally laid to rest next to his wife Jean Ann Bell at the 9-Mile cemetery.
Many of those legendary Australian kiaps
(patrol officers) who helped develop Papua New Guinea into what it is
today will sadly not be around as the country celebrates 35 years of independence
next month.
Such a man was Ian Downs, who died on Tuesday August 24, 2004, in
the Gold Coast, aged 89, one of the greatest and most legendary men who walked
this country.
Ian Downs
Downs is remembered as the principal
facilitator of the contruction of the Highlands
Highway – linking the Highlands,
Lae and Madang - as well as being a powerful influence in the founding of PNG’s
great coffee industry.
The entire highway today covers about 700
km, rising from sea level to over 8000 ft and much of it going through some of
the most-rugged terrain in PNG.
A
semi-trailer along the Highlands
Highway outside Kundiawa.-Pictures by MALUM
NALU
It is all situated in the tropics and, as a
result, tropical downpours coupled with the great elevation cause regular and
consistent damage to the Highway and its feeder roads.
Drainage is a critical issue and blocked
drains usually result in landslides, landslips, and large sections of the road
just falling away.
Border of Simbu and Western Highlands provinces at Munde
The highway opened up the Highlands
and provided the initial impetus for the coffee industry to flourish and
prosper, and provided the initial link for the initial political unification
process of PNG.
A farmer rehabilitating his coffee garden in the WaghiValley
under Coffee Industry Corporation's coffee rehabilitation programme
The highway, for the Highlands,
was their gateway to the world, and all of that region’s valuable coffee
exports leave by the same route.
Most of what makes modern living possible
arrives in the Highlands via the highway, and
that entire region’s valuable coffee exports leave by the same route.
Main street of Banz, Western Highlands province
The Porgera gold mine would never have been
established without the highway, and it continues to be a lifeline for Porgera
mine and the oil and gas projects in the Southern
Highlands.
At lower elevations, Ramu Sugar has tonnes
of sugar exports that get to the LaePort via the Markham
section of the highway.
Woman struggles along rundown Minj, Western Highlands province,
which is a skeleton of its former self
There is no single infrastructural asset of
greater value to PNG than the Highlands
Highway.
It was while reading some most-misleading
information about the Highlands
Highway in the media recently, including who built
it and when it was first built, that I decided to go through some old files
Roadside market near Yonki, Eastern Highlands
In 1953, thanks to Ian Downs, you could
drive from Lae to Goroka and on to MountHagen.
He was also a member of the first House of
Assembly in 1964, when he collected a record majority of over 100,000 votes –
which goes to show the respect he commanded – to win the seat of the New Guinea
Highlands, a constituency in the central highlands region with a population of
over half a million people.
In
the face of an increasingly nationalist style of politics he decided not to
stand for re-election in 1968, and retired from parliament to take up private
interests.
“He’s the one who got the road (Highlands Highway)
through,” pioneer Highlands explorer Mick Leahy once said of Downs.
Evangelical Bible Church property at Kassam, Eastern
Highlands
“He’s a man and a half this Downs.
“A few more like him and New Guinea
would really get somewhere.”
A man of intellect and a great strength of
character, Downs was also a writer of note.
A former patrol officer who rose to the
position of deputy administrator in the mid-1950s, Downs
was a prominent figure in PNG in the last years of the Australian trusteeship,
and possibly the only person who combined the roles of administrator,
politician, planter and historian.
Ian Fairley Graham Downs was born in Edinburgh, Scotland,
in 1915 and was educated at Brighton and GeelongGrammar Schools
between 1926 and 1928.
He entered the RoyalAustralianNavalCollege as a midshipman in 1915, and
in 1935, joined the New
Guinea administration as a cadet patrol
officer.
Downs took up his appointment to New Guinea in
1936 and was one of the first patrol officers assigned to the Western
Highlands.
He accompanied John Black and Jim Taylor on
part of their famous Hagen-Sepik patrol in 1938-39.
From 1942 to 1945, Downs was a Coastwatcher
with the Royal Australian Navy in New Guinea waters.
Downs returned to New Guinea
after World War II and by 1951 was the youngest district commissioner in the
administration, based in Madang.
Between 1952-56 he held the position of
district commissioner in Goroka, before resigning to take up coffee farming and
to enter politics.
Succeeding the late George Greathead as
district commissioner to the then Central Highlands, a huge “middle kingdom” of
more than a million people stretching from Kassam in the East to the then Dutch
New Guinea border in the West.
Disillusioned with official policy, Downs resigned from his post as district commissioner in
1956 and in the following year gained election as Member for the New Guinea
Mainland in the Legislative Council.
As a parliamentarian he was further elected
in 1961 to the administrator's advisory council (later known as the
administrator's executive council), a board set up to advise the Administrator
on policy issues.
Downs resigned from the government, where he had long been a member of
the legislative council, to contest this country’s first national elections.
Downs was elected to the first House of Assembly in 1964 with a record
majority of over 100, 000 votes.
For the next four years he held the seat of
the New Guinea Highlands, a constituency in the Central Highlands region with a
population of over half a million people.
In the face of an increasingly nationalist
style of politics he decided not to stand for re-election in 1968, and retired
from parliament to take up private interests.
He involved himself deeply in the infant
coffee industry, being instrumental in the creating of the original Coffee
Marketing Board in 1964, of the coffee exporting company Coffee International
Ltd, of the Highlands Farmers & Settlers Association and its trading arm
Farmset Ltd, and was active in many areas of PNG’s early political and social
development.
It was during these years that Downs
pioneered what became known as Korfena Plantations, a group of coffee
plantations centred in the UpperAsaroValley,
as well as one of the first village-based coffee marketing groups known as
Upper Asaro Coffee Community Ltd.
His novel The Stolen Land was
published in 1970, and he returned to Australian in 1970 after 35 years in the
country.
His widely respected publication The
Australian Trusteeship: Papua New
Guinea, 1945-75 was published in 1980,
followed by his autobiography The Last Mountain in 1986.
Ian Downs’ contribution to the founding of
modern-day Papua New Guinea
was immense, and thousands who knew him well have mourned his passing.
Papua New Guinea is built from the top as an artificial democratic state.
All real democracies have a stable farming community.
You may wish to look back through history at the viable nation states, smallest to largest.
They all had some form of farm tenure that allowed the farmers and artisans to support the entire society, the leaders recognised this in the way they ran the state.
The state was based on the production of its people. Leaders were nowhere without the economic support of the people.
The farmers and artisans may have been treated badly, but they were always the support of the state.
The Papua New Guinea state is based the support given by aid agencies and the production of the resource exploiters.
The production of the people does not have much impact on the influential leaders.
Because of this little consideration is given to the people; our leaders do not have to look to the people to support the state.
The purpose of the people is to be misled once every five years; they are then of no further use apart from being used as a cover-up for the leaders in their self-aggrandisement.
The people have no effective voice after the election; at least until shortly before the next one.
The people can safely be ignored while our leaders deal with the people who really matter; the aid givers and the exploiters of the resources of PNG.
In PNG most of our politicians are joined at the hip in their greed for aid money and the money from the external exploiters of PNG resources.
To promote sustainable farming and assist the formation of a stable state
Slash-and-burn agricultural system is the result of thousands of years of isolation. Sustainable farming can only be built on a permanent and stable farming system.
From this base we may, as others have, develop a stable government.
Until there is a big change in the farming system away from shifting agriculture, the entire state is based upon exploitation.
Developers exploit the minerals, fisheries and forests.
They exhaust the resource and move.
The PNG farmers exploit the soil; they exhaust the soil and they also move on.
In general PNG politicians exploit the people, if successful they are re-elected, otherwise a new exploiter takes his place.
Rarely do we see a true servant of the people succeed.
This is the situation that has to change before the majority of our population (our farmers) can improve our society to the betterment of our ordinary citizens.
By
promoting land registration our leaders are now advocating a return to
the pre-independence days of expatriate development. Village land is to
be registered and our leaders will find developers.
This is quite clear from the Prime minister’s comments on the front page of a newspaper.
Our leaders have now acknowledged their collective failure to produce efficient small farmers throughout Papua New Guinea.
It
can be readily understood that agricultural development and profits do
not come in a few years; the economic life of the present young
generation will be over by the time that the land should be returned.
I have grave doubts that the land will ever be returned to the people under a later regime.
Corruption appears to be the order of the day now.
Corruption will remain and can only be worse when these land registration deals mature.
With many other citizens, my experience is that Lands Department, with other departments, is corrupt.
It is now 35 years after independence; Papua New Guinea is full of villagers and villages that are all consumers of services and producing little.
This is a country of unsustainable slash and burn gardens.
There are very few developed farms to be handed on to sons.
We should be developing many, more independent, stable farming communities.
Almost everything relating to agriculture depends largely on the necessary input of expatriates.
When
there are no produce exporters, there is no export income; no feed
mill, no chicken business; no flourmill, no bread; no importers, no
tools, etc.
In
the early 1960’s I enjoyed fresh milk and cream from Jersey cows in the
Trobriands; fresh milk, cream and cheese at the Lutheran missions
throughout the Highlands.
I helped a missionary to make bacon near Kundiawa.
Are these things beyond the ability of the people of today?
The stable farming system where these activities can develop has never been promoted.
New tools, yes; new crops, yes; stable farming system, no!
Lack of funds is not the only reason for poor construction works on the Lae roads.
The process involve in a life of a road project is as follows:
1. Inception;
2. Feasibility study - (if feasible then funding is sourced for full design and construction);
3. Detailed engineering design (feed);
4. Tendering followed by bids evaluation and contract award;
5. Mobilisation and procurement by contractor;
6. Quality assurance - supervision (and sometimes management by a different contractor or Department of Works engineers); and
7. Certification and commissioning.
If all the above have been carefully and professionally executed, we would never have problems with sub-standard road works like we are seeing in Lae.
All registered engineers with IEPNG are duty bound by the institution's code of ethics and perform their roles with great care and diligence.
Obviously, registered civil engineers were not involved in the supervision of the recently upgraded Lae roads to ensure quality assurance is achieved.
I have not seen the Lae roads design myself but I believe DoW will not be foolish enough to award the design contract to an incompetent consultant to prepare the design and the tender documents, however, an investigation if carried out can tell us if the design was superior or not and whether the construction contractors did their work in accordance with all specifications stated in the design correctly and that the failure lies with the design.
I would strongly recommend that an investigation be carried out to establish as to why the recently-constructed section of the road running along LaeTechnicalCollege failed to perform after less then 12 months which is unacceptable.
After all public money was used and someone should be held accountable.
