THE National Alliance party’s highlands bloc is rallying behind Deputy Prime Minister Don Polye for the party’s leadership when Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare steps down, The National reports.
In a show of solidarity, members of the Highlands bloc travelled with Polye to Laiagam last Friday to address a huge crowd in the rural township.
Those who travelled included Western Highlands Governor Tom Olga, Tambul-Nebilyer MP and Civil Aviation Minister Benjamin Poponawa, Mul-Baiyer MP and Internal Security Minister Sani Rambi, Wapenamanda MP Miki Kaeok and Lagaip-Porgera MP Philip Kikala.
Polye and his team travelled to Laiagam at the invitation of Kikala to officially close the week-long West Enga tumbuna cultural show.
Polye, who is the highlands deputy NA leader, told the huge crowd that had packed the Laiagam oval that he was ready to take over the party’s leadership when Sir Michael steps down.
Speaking in Engan dialect for maximum impact, Polye explained that the latest political events that saw the sacking of former deputy prime minister Sir Puka Temu was not an attempt to change the government, but an internal leadership issue.
He said the opposition seized the opportunity in creating political instability in pushing for a vote of no-confidence.
Polye said the NA leadership was not restricted to a particular district, province or region, and he would go for it.
A HIGH-powered ministerial committee, set up four years ago to expedite the K3.2 billion Ramu nickel project in the Bismarck Range of Madang, has never met, The National reports.
The project, Papua New Guinea’s first nickel and cobalt mine, is already 12 months behind schedule and costing developer Ramu NiCo (MCC) more than K7 million a day.
The committee was set up by a special meeting of the national executive council on April 13, 2006, after ministers were given a background brief of the mining at Kurumbukari in Usino-Bundi electorate and refinery operations at BasamukBay in RaiCoast electorate.
Its job was to “oversee and expedite the finalisation and implementation of the Ramu nickel-cobalt project” and be led by the mining minister as chairman. The minister at the time was Michael Ogio.
Other ministers in the committee were from works, national planning and monitoring, labour and industrial relations, foreign affairs and immigration, environment and conservation, lands and physical planning and health.
The fact that its existence was not widely known was evident in labour and industrial relations’ moves last year to remove some Chinese workers from Ramu NiCo for failing to fulfil PNG work permit requirements.
Unbeknownst to the department, the special NEC meeting had also directed the foreign affairs and immigration minister to use his powers under relevant legislation “to give appropriate visas to foreign nationals with relevant qualifications and experience required in the construction and development phase of the project”.
The man responsible for all mining and exploration activities in Madang, John Bivi, last week confirmed the formation of the ministerial committee exclusively for the Ramu nickel project but had not received any correspondence and deliberations to date.
“As far as I know, it has never sat,” Bivi, who heads a one-man provincial mines office, said. “It shows clearly the government’s lack of total commitment to the project which the provincial government fully backs.
“It is another case of too much talk, too much promises and no action to back them up,” he said.
Similarly, a spokesman for Ramu NiCo said at the weekend they were not aware that such a ministerial committee existed.
Ramu NiCo is already locked in a court battle with a group of landowners from the BasamukBay area who opposed the company’s deep sea tailings placement system.
The latter has been granted an interim injunction stopping work on the tailings system until the substantive issue is heard by Justice David Cannings in Madang this week.
To add to Ramu NiCo’s woes, the acting chief commissioner of the Land Titles Commission Benedict Batata had refused Madang provincial administration’s request for the special land titles commissioners to resume hearing outstanding Ramu nickel project land disputes.
Bivi said they had been informed by the department of justice and attorney-general that the disputes, being heard by the LTC until the death of its chairman, would be listed as an ordinary application for land tenure conversion to be deliberated on at a later date.
“It is obvious that we have not been supportive of this project from day one,” he said.
Bivi said they had noted new Mining Minister John Pundari’s pledge to fast-track the Ramu nickel project, hoping he would revive the ministerial committee and not sit back like his predecessors.
MORE than K40 million has been taken across the PNG-Indonesia land border in West Sepik over the years, Customs and PNG Defence Force personnel in Vanimo have revealed, The National reports.
The amount could be higher because of the many illegal trade activities taking place in the border crossing areas, they said.
The government officers estimated that about K1.8 million was transacted between Indonesian vendors and PNG buyers every day around the border town of Wutung and the trading post of Skoow in Indonesia.
Many Papua New Guineans, from Vanimo and surrounding villages, flocked to the trade centre to buy cheap Indonesian food and household goods, clothes and electrical goods.
The trading has resulted in Vanimo running low on cash and many businesses in town were closing because they could not compete with the cheap Indonesian products being sold.
They said in order to plug the leak, the BSP Vanimo branch was only allowing a maximum withdrawal of K100 a day so that the cash flow was maintained.
The officers, who wanted to remain anonymous, said a lot
of people were also entering
the country undetected and many illegal activities also took place undetected.
The officers said the border could be better monitored if they had more manpower and improved living and working conditions.
Meanwhile, Bulolo MP Sam Basil, who was in Vanimo over the weekend, said the free trade on the border should be controlled, adding that the government should regulate the free trade along the border so that such a big flow of cash did not get across the border undetected.
Basil also encouraged the people to study the Asian way of running businesses so that they could be as competitive as their Indonesian counterparts.
I made the point that Papua New Guinea had a clean environment when I was trying to promote produce and wild mushroom drying during my election campaign.
I took dried mushroom, bananas and tomatoes as samples to the villages, very acceptable.
Had I won, I would have promoted charcoal production as a precourser of various activities such as produce drying, metal forging and melting local manufacture of
crowbars from car axles, various tools, etc.
We have here, growing without the benefit of acid rain and windblown pollution, populations of wild mushrooms such as Shiitake, Maitake, Cep or Porchini (fresh on the Kainantu roadside at K4.00 /kilo) and various others.
The mushrooms are in quantity and are freely available to the villagers.
What is not available is the technology to dry them; the marketing can be done through the various exporters.
A million village households with most of them having access to wild mushrooms.
The world export market is in the billions.
This brings me to the point of this email.
PNG is training all the experts in mining, intensive (plantation) agriculture, IT, the various professions, these have parallels in developed countries, geologists and
others find employment in developed economies.
There are a lot of proven technologies fit for rural people that, if promoted, would improve life at the village level.
These technologies in the developed countries past were discarded due in part to the wage increases driving improved technology.
Wages in PNG are low leading me to believe that we should go back to find our future.
There is a place for these technologies to be promoted as a part of large organisations' social networking.
Sustainable farming should have a place for local skill development that will enable the communities to be as selfsufficient as possible and obtain only such supplies as are unavailable in the local environment.
·Charcoal production;
·Convenient cooking;
·Forging and repairing simple tools;
·Drying produce for storage and export to other centres. I previously sold dried rainforest mushrooms to hotels in Lae and Moresby;
·Building;
·Lime burning and limestone crushing for building and agriculture respectively;
·Brick and roof tile making. Brick laying using lime mortar as the Romans did before cement and preferable to cement for this purpose. I have bricks to burn. At present, there are burnt brick building in Goroka that are abour 50 years old. The villagers would have no need to import cement and corrugated iron, especially to remote areas. This could also be a large business close to towns and cities using the deposits of clay present.
A powerful new book on the history of the famous
Wau/Bulolo goldfields of Morobe province, to be launched by renowned Papua New Guinea friend Professor Ross Garnaut
at the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney on August 19, promises to tell the
story of the goldrush as it has never been told before.
Not A
Poor Man’s Field(book cover below), by Australian Michael Waterhouse,
explores Australia’s
colonial experience in New
Guinea before World War 11 – a unique but
little-known period in PNG and Australian history.
Back in May 2008, Waterhouse (pictured below) corresponded
briefly with me about the book he’d written on the Morobe goldfields pre-war,
and although things had moved ever so slowly, it is my pleasure to report that
the book has finally become a reality.
It is a big book of 120,000 words plus end
notes, 150 photographs and seven maps and has been financially supported by
Barrick, Morobe Mining Joint Ventures, Bank South Pacific, Lihir Gold Ltd and
PNG Chamber of Mines and Petroleum.
Waterhouse has close family ties to the pre-war
goldfields, his grandfather Leslie Waterhouse having been a pivotal player in
their development, as a director of the largest gold-mining company, Bulolo
Gold Dredging, and the biggest airline, Guinea Airways.
“My relationship with Wau and Bulolo is through
my grandfather, who from his Sydney
base oversighted the development of BGD’s operations from the time of his first
visit in 1929 to his death in 1945, at which time he was planning the
resumption of its operations after the war,” he tells The National.
“He travelled there regularly but left day-to-day
management in the hands of a general manager.
“He was a director of Placer Development, Bulolo
Gold Dredging and Guinea Airways and so was pivotal to much of what happened
pre-war.
“I embarked on researching and writing the book
after being asked to write an article on him for the Australian Dictionary of Biography.”
First copies of A Poor Man’s Field are expected
to arrive in Port Moresby next month for sale at
the University of PNG Bookshop, and the PNG launch to will be on
October 15 at the CrownePlaza in Port
Moresby.
Waterhouse and his wife are coming to Port Moresby on October 4, overnight, and then travel on
to the fabled Morobe gold towns of Lae, Wau, Bulolo and Salamaua – in a
historical tour de force - before returning to Port Moresby for the book launch.
He says that Not
A Poor Man’s Field is not simply another “white man’s history” as he
explores the experience of villagers and indentured labourers as best as he can
in the absence of written records.
“For the record,” Waterhouse expounds, “while
the sub-title refers to it being an ‘Australian colonial history’, this is
because the main market is in Australia
and the book has to be positioned as ‘Australian history’ to be
commercially-viable.
“However, I’ve gone to considerable lengths to
bring a New Guineans perspective to the history.
“This is not simply another ‘white man’s
history’.
“I do feel strongly about this – it is your
country’s history as well, and I’ll make this point at every opportunity.”
Not A
Poor Man’s Field is a dramatic account of small miners, an
extraordinarily rich gold discovery, visionaries and the construction of giant
dredges, power stations and townships in a remote jungle area
It is also the story of how risk-taking pilots,
flying aeroplanes ranging from single-engine plywood biplanes to large Junkers
G31 freighters, opened up an otherwise impenetrable country.
New
Guinea led
the world in commercial aviation throughout the 1930s; world records were often
set and as often broken.
The book discusses early encounters between
villagers and Europeans from both white and black perspectives, as well as the
indentured labour system which drew New Guineans to the goldfields from all
over the country.
Other themes include the camaraderie of white
settlers in an alien environment, race relations in a colonial society, the
ineffectiveness of Australia’s
administration of New Guinea
under a League of Nations mandate and the
Japanese invasion and its consequences.
The book takes a multi-disciplinary approach,
analysing the colonial experience from economic, social, ethnographic and political/administrative
perspectives.
It also
conveys a compelling sense of time and place by extensively quoting
participants, both black and white, and through the judicious selection of old
photographs.
The result is a portrait of unforgettable contrasts.
Not A
Poor Man’s Field takes its name from the Administrator of
New Guinea, Brigadier General Evan Wisdom, who when trying to discourage
Australians rushing to the goldfields in 1926, wrote: “A poor man’s field in Australia is understood to be a field to which a
man without anything can go with his swag and live by the gold he gets from the
field; he is not dependent on anyone helping him. He can go out with a swag and
a tin of ‘dog’ and get enough gold to keep him going. But you must have natives
here to help you, and money to pay them, money to carry you there, and on when
you get there; therefore it is not a poor man’s field.”
The title conveys a sense of why this goldfield
was so different to any other and encapsulates a theme that re-emerges throughout
the book and prevails to this day.
The author decided to write this book after
being asked to write an article about his grandfather, Leslie Waterhouse, for
the Australian Dictionary of Biography.
He soon realised that he was uncovering, layer
by layer, the dramatic story of a little-known period in Australia’s and PNG’s
history, one largely obscured by the passage of time and the destruction of
records by the Japanese during WW11.
“Many Australian publishers have a view that
‘books on Papua New Guinea
don’t sell’,” Waterhouse elaborates.
“This raised the important question as to how a
country such as PNG can develop a sense of its own national identity if no-one
will publish its history.
“A second question was how Australians can be
expected to engage practically with its nearest neighbour if they know so
little of the historical relationship between the two countries.
“A primary objective, therefore, has been to
provide Papua New Guineans with a fresh perspective on their own history and
Australians with a better appreciation of our historical relationship at a time
when political and economic relationships are becoming more complex.
“The book has been written for a general
audience, although it breaks new ground in a number of areas and is
multi-disciplinary in its approach.”
Waterhouse hopes his book will encourage
academics in both countries to embark on further research into, and help
develop a broader understanding of the history of the Australia-PNG
relationship.
Waterhouse has recreated a period that has been
largely obscured by time and the destruction of records during WW11.
In doing so, he has drawn on diverse and often
unexpected source, with insights gained from studies in anthropology at SydneyUniversity
and in economics and economic history at the AustralianNationalUniversity.
His experience in senior positions with
government (the Commonwealth Treasury) and in business (with Westpac and as a
consultant) has also enabled him to explore the commercial, financial and
government dimensions in depth.
Not A
Poor Man’s Field is available through bookshops in Australia and
from the UPNG Bookshop in PNG.
In Australia, the recommended retail
price is $59.95.
Please note that the book is unlikely to be
available until mid-August in Australia
and October in PNG.
One hundred copies of a Special Limited Edition of Not A Poor Man’s Field are also
available for purchase.
Each copy contains four Bulolo stamps, showing a
Junkers G31 flying over the goldfields flanked by a Spanish galleon and a white
miner panning for gold, with a New
Guinea villager looking over his shoulder.
The stamps are mounted in a panel on the front
of the book, which is bound in maroon reconstituted leather, with headbands and
marker ribbon, decorated and lettered on the spine and decorated on the front,
all in gilt.
These stamps were used by Bulolo Gold Dredging
to post gold bars back to Australia
in the 1930s and early 1940s and are therefore genuine artefacts from the
pre-war New Guinea
goldfields.
The Special
Edition also includes a brief statement by the acting chief post master at
Rabaul in 1935 on the cost of posting gold bars, together with a first-hand
account by one of the pilots of the unusual way the gold was transported.
As the gold was carried in all sorts of
conditions by plane from Bulolo to Port Moresby
and then by ship to Australia,
some of the stamps have minor perforation damage or slight staining.
In
selecting the stamps, preference has been given to those whose image is largely
unobscured by the post office cancellation.
The cost of each Special Edition copy is $A300, including postage and handling
within Australia.
Agriculture dominates the rural economy of Papua New Guinea.
More than five million rural dwellers, representing 80% of the population, earn a living from subsistence agriculture and selling crops in domestic and international markets.
Hence, it is only fitting that Food and Agriculture in Papua New Guinea(cover pictured), the most up-to-date and arguably the most-informative publication ever done on the subject in the country, was launched in Port Moresby on Friday August 6, 2010, by former deputy prime minister Sir Puka Temu.
The book is edited by Dr Michael Bourke of The Australian National University, a household name in agriculture in Papua New Guinea, and Tracy Harwood, and is a welcome addition to PNG literature when reliable and up-to-date statistics about the country are as rare as hen’s teeth.
Contributing editors apart from Dr Bourke are Dr Bryant Allen, Dr Matthew Allen, Dr Andrew McGregor, Prof John Gibson, Prof Alan Quartermain, Dr Kate Barclay and Dr Jean Kennedy.
Many aspects of agriculture in PNG are described in this data-rich book of 650 pages, which took eight years to research and write from 2001-2008.
Topics include agriculture environments in which crops are grown; production of food crops, cash crops and animals; land use; soils; demography; migration; the macro-economic environment; gender issues; governance of agricultural institutions; and transport.
The history of agriculture over the 50,000 years that PNG has been occupied by humans is summarised.
Much of the information presented is not readily available within PNG.
The book contains results of many new analyses, including a food budget for the entire nation.
The text is supported by 165 tables and 215 maps and figures.
“Basically, we received a grant from AusAID to do a project which was called ‘Information for Rural Development in Papua New Guinea’,” Dr Bourke tells The National.
“And this book is one of the components of the project.
“What we’ve done is we’ve assembled a huge amount of information relevant to agriculture in PNG.
“This covers issues like the physical environment, land and people, and secondly, we’ve got a lot of information on food production, consumption and imports on village food production systems and cash income from agricultural development, policies and governance.
“Some of the things that are in the book include a major section on the history of agriculture in PNG.
“There is a lot of data on the production of staple food crops.
“This date covers all of the cash crops, both in the formal sector such as coffee and cocoa, and in the informal sector such as fresh food, betelnut or firewood.
“We look at the factors that will determine whether a cash crop will be successful or not, and we’ve also examined a number of issues relevant to agricultural development such as rural development projects, gender issues and transport infrastructure.”
One of the outstanding things this book does is to dispel 20 common “myths” about agriculture in PNG, which are:
1.Food production is not keeping pace with population growth;
2.PNG is a food-deficit country;
3.Papua New Guineans live mainly on imported rice;
4.Imports of rice are increasing rapidly;
5.The Australian Administration did not promote rice production in PNG and Australians are attempting to stop local rice production to protect the Australian rice industry;
6.During the 1997-1998 food shortages, Australians saved many Papua New Guineans from starving to death with an emergency famine relief programme;
7.Imported meat, particularly lamb flaps from Australia and New Zealand, is increasing rapidly in volume;
8.Lamb flaps are an unhealthy food;
9.PNG agriculture has not changed for thousands of years. The practices and crops that are used today are traditional and unchanging;
10.PNG has an abundance of high-quality land for agriculture and any tropical crop will grow well anywhere in PNG;
11.With the exception of palm oil, production of export cash crops is static (sometimes expressed as: production is the same now as it was in 1975 at independence);
12.Women do most of the work producing food in PNG;
13.Villagers have a lot of spare time and it does not matter to them how much labour is used to produce a certain crop;
14.Agricultural production is seriously constrained by customary land tenure arrangements;
15.There are few roads in PNG and this reduces agricultural production;
16.There is little information about PNG agriculture with which to develop sound policy, or for planning;
17.There is significant potential to export fresh food to New Zealand, Australia and South-East Asia;
18.Global climate change is now causing significant problem for many people on very small islands;
19.There is no poverty in rural PNG because there is plenty of food to eat; and
20.Poor governance of agricultural institutions does not matter because rural people grow their own food and look after themselves.
The good news for PNG is that the book is being distributed freely throughout the country by the University of PNG Bookshop.
“We’ve received a grant from AusAID to publish and distribute 4,000 copies,” Dr Bourke tells The National.
“So the book is being very widely distributed in PNG to universities, government departments, commercial sector, high schools and individuals.
“Extra copies can be obtained by sending an email to Sue Rider at sue.rider@anu.edu.au.
“As well, all the tables in the book will be available as Excel files on the new website PNGweb.com.
“The website is not yet public but will be in about one month.”
The concept for this book was developed by Dr Bourke, Dr Bryant Allen and Prof John Gibson.
The idea was presented to the PNG National Agriculture Research institute, Department of Agriculture and Livestock, and Department of National Planning and Monitoring.
Staff at these institutions including Raghunath Ghodake, Valentine Kambori, Mathew Kanua, Roy Masumdu and Geoff Wiles, supported the idea, commented on the proposal and suggested additional material.
Many people from the commercial sector, industry bodies and government departments in PNG provided data, as did some based in Australia and elsewhere.
Some sections were sent to specialists for comments.
Most of the information on village-sector agriculture was collected from hundreds of people from every district in PNG who willingly gave their time and immense knowledge about their food production and cash crop systems.
The book was produced by members of the Land Management Group, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University.
One of the joys of growing up in Papua New Guinea is to the big singsings that happen yearly or even the colourful church activities.
I vividly remember Independence Day and the host of color from all part of the country.
From the majestic plums drifting on the head pieces of the mighty men and women of the highlands, electrifying rhythmic chants and drums from the New Guinea islands, carvings and dances that depict mystical stories of the Momase people and the spectacular nautical innovations of the tribes from the southern region.
So things are not the same, we have lost some of our old ways and we are sometimes accused of not honoring our culture.
But we have been progressive and as a result, we have forged an identity that resonates a nation of many tongues.
From Patti Doi and Betty Toea’s music booming in PMVs that are owned by Highlanders, colorful fabrics that depict tapa patterns from the Orokaiva worn by our sisters and mothers, bilums from the highlands carrying our precious love ones, delicacies rich in nutrients that was only available in the rivers, islands and highlands are now available to everyone.
Our culture indeed transcends our way of life but with the absence of political and policy direction, this resource has been underutilised and in some tragic instances, stolen, abused and lost.
So the question has to be asked, is it worth investing our resources to protect, promote and preserve our culture and heritage?
Apart from nostalgic and patriotic excitement, is it worth it?
Absolutely.
It separates us from the rest of the world, it provides us the unique opportunity to help humanity from fighting diseases to resolving conflicts, and more importantly, to empower our people to move away from poverty.
Indeed for many years, economic, industry and investment planners have not looked at the possibility of the culture, or to be more generic, the creative industry, as a tool for growth.
A few entities have been burning the torch for this sector.
From the tireless efforts of the National Cultural Commission in preserving and promoting our culture here and abroad, super artists Jeffery and his brother Mairi Feeger blowing the international scene by storm, legendary musos Auirikeke, Ben Hakalitz, Telek and the darling of the garment industry, Florence ‘Bilum Lady’ Jaukae, are all making major inroads internationally.
But guys, this is only a speck of what’s in our country.
Take some time and wonder in and out of the craft markets, church activities, clubs, galleries and even the bus stops, you’ll see the talent of our people.
But tragically like anything when it comes to money, those that want to make it ride on the talented and end up sucking them dry.
From paying them merely nothing for the creativity they’ve done, pirating designs and music and outright theft.
Many of our people in the creative industry are dying without knowing their rights.
They live in a cage that their employees, agents and promoters don’t tell them what that they are entitled to.
From song writers, performers, sound engineers, artisans, dance troupes, cultural groups, weavers, carvers, traditional medicinal owners and many others are being denied of their wealth.
They need to usurp these rights so that they may be rewarded of their creativity and heritage.
These rights will ensure users are able to pay them fees so that they may feed and clothe their children and more importantly, continue creating their products or preserving culture.
Whether intellectual property and traditional knowledge protection, our people need to move into this area so that their rights are protected and they are able to utilise it for wealth creation in the market place.
So next time when you purchase a pirated CD, Made In China crap flogging it off as a PNG design, bullshit food that’s not from our land or designs on fabrics stolen, think of the people you have denied that revenue.
For it is their love of life we bathe ourselves of our identity.
