Morobe Provincial Youth Development Workshop - Participants Address

Morobe Provincial Youth Development Workshop

May 08^th 2015

Salvation Army Conference Room

Participants Address by Reuben Mete

 [PPA Community Development; Dignitaries; Ladies and Gentleman]

          As these Community Development Officers, Youth Workers and Stakeholders dealing with young people from Morobe knew and as the rest of you may heard the saying ‘Youths are leaders for tomorrow,’ but our youths should be provided the opportunities now. And so, no one will be benefiting from our young people if we keep allowing them to remain silent.

Apparently agreed that at the ripe youth old age of 30 later this year, I felt I was not worth holding on to youth leadership as the National Director of ELCPNG. However, sadly to what Hon. Jim Kass, Madang regional governor says as reported by the National Newspaper that in PNG, we still have some of the oldest youths on earth.

One of our participants told us yesterday about the advanced age of some people he’s seen involved, and the need of establishing Youth Mentorship Programs. I have decided I am not going to end up on any retirement scrapheap here in Youth work but by becoming as a mentor.  

        My brother Richard Gura, a representative from the Morobe Provincial AIDS Council has urged me to tell you about how HIV AIDS is increasing at an alarmin rate within the province and is penetrating into our rural innocent population and what happened after – we are all sitting on a time bomb. Well, briefly, I was threatened to take extra precautions when travelling up the Markham Hi-way by my big sister from Markham District due to high rise of prostitution.

If my speech today went on air and if the story became a front page in the PNG print and most liked on social media about the accepting of this foreign and alien inventions occupying our beloved province that once stood on the Christian Principles – and once sing the hymn Stand up Stand up for Jesus; I would simply stuck my tail in my back and go to a distance place and never to be seen again.

         

        Turning to more serious matters, I really welcome this initiative for young leaders of Morobe Province to have a workable plan (2015 – 2020). A platform for our young men and women to raise their voice and concerns on their problems and issues.

        And as a child at a Lutheran primary school in some years ago we were constantly being told about the work of the Girl Guides and Scouts in Morobe Province.  But a lot of those important youth links have faded away by the ignorance of our leaders these days by which I find appalling. One of the reasons is that the older generation and the youth generation relationship gets far too neglected at this end – especially by the mandated legislators.

        I have a bit of trouble with this constant labelling of our youths as ‘drug bodies’ as if we don’t event take medical drugs.  I’ll admit it’s true in the squatter settlements and streets of Lae and other peri-urban centres. In fact I can see many drug bodies in this room.  Out in the villages I much prefer the label that somebody comes up with years ago, “subsistence affluence”. The people of PNG have fed themselves for thousands of years without any support from anybody.

        However, I have to agree with some of the discussion we have had after the UNFPA presentation especially on the Post-2015 Youth Led Development agendas.

        One aspect of this gathering I was pleased to see was the involvement of all stakeholders dealing with Youths within the province, something we should give credit to the Division of Community Development and the organizers.

        The other subject I was pleased to see raised on a few occasions was sport. Morobeens love their sport and they are good at it. I think that we been crown the overall winner of the last PNG Games is the proof – ASA Sumbac. Same Speed Same Speed!

        Owen, spoke about how our Provincial Capital and the Industrial Hub of Papua New Guinea, our beloved Lae City doesn’t seem to have any children’s playing parks and recreational areas where we can have youth bridging programs from childhood to youth.

        Finally, I must congratulate United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the National Youth Development Authority for providing resources and expertise in developing this 5 Year Morobe Provincial Youth Plan (2015 – 2020).

I would like to also thank the Salvation Army Church to allow us to use their Conference facilities and their hospitality service over the last few days. I’d also like the Forestry Research Institute by using their podium now.

I am glad to see that my province is embarking on Investing in today’s youth for tomorrow’s benefits by seeing that every young person’s potentials is fulfilled. Today, we have seen clearly that our young people can offer their province an opportunity to transform its future.

Together with my other participants, we are glad to be part of what the unborn generation should take proud of – the final drafting of The 5 Year Morobe Provincial Youth Plan.

Thank you all and may God Bless. 

Australia-Papua New Guinea Emerging Leaders Dialogue Dec 3rd 2014 Lowy Institute for International Policy 'Cocktail Reception Address.'

By Sean Dorney
(Former ABC Correspondent to Papua New Guinea and veteran Australian journalist) 

As these Emerging Leaders from Papua New Guinea and Australia know and as the rest of you may have heard I was made redundant by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in August. In this year’s Australian Budget, the Abbot Government cancelled the Foreign Affairs Department contract under which the ABC ran our international television service, Australia Network. About 80% of what I did as the ABC’s Pacific Correspondent went out exclusively on Australia Network and so the ABC apparently agreed that at the ripe old age of 63 I was not worth holding on to.

        However, thanks to what Reuben Mete told us yesterday about the advanced age of some people he’s seen involved, I have decided I am not going to end up on any retirement scrapheap here in Australia. No, Reuben, you’ve given me an inkling of where my future career lies. I’m going back to PNG to be a Youth Leader.

        My journalist brother here, Alexander Rheeney, the Editor of the PNG Post Courier has urged me to tell you about how I got deported from Papua New Guinea and what happened after. Well, briefly, the ABC and the PNG Government had a major disagreement over Four Corners running an interview with a Free West Papua bush commander I had helped Four Corners arrange. I was threatened with deportation if the interview went to air and when the story became a front page yarn in the Australian media about the ABC accepting censorship by a foreign Government, the ABC ran the interview and I got deported.

        I’ve also been deported from Fiji but I can tell you PNG does it a lot better. When the Prime Minister’s speech writer was doing up my deportation speech for the then Foreign Minister, RabbbieNamaliu, he rang me up to ask, “Sean, when do you want to go?”

That was in 1984. By 1987 PNG had lifted the ban on me and let me resume as the ABC Port Moresby Correspondent. Three years after, by now Prime Minister, RabbieNamaliu, awarded me an imperial honour, the MBE, for services to journalism and sport. I’ll get onto the reason for the sport later. But that’s PNG – the deport you and then six years later you get a gong from the Governor General. Fiji booted me out in 2009 and I’ve put it to Prime Minister Bainimarama that if he’s to beat PNG’s six year standing record he’ll have to let me back in and give me an award before the end of this month!

        Turning to more serious matters, I really welcome this initiative for young leaders from Papua New Guinea and Australia to get together like this. People to people links are what can resuscitate the PNG/Australia relationship. Years ago there were much stronger links. For instance, my father, who was a doctor in the Australian Army in World War Two, a Major with the Field Ambulance, won the DSO, the Distinguished Service Order, at Pabu near Finschhaffen in the Morobe Province, when his unit was cut off and surrounded by the Japanese for 11 days.

        And as a child at a Catholic primary school in Townsville many years ago we were constantly being told about the work of the Australian missionaries in PNG. Actually, in one of those bizarre degrees of separation instances, a nun who taught me at St Josephs on The Strand in Townsville, Sister Rose, later taught my wife, Pauline, at the Catholic Secondary School at Pipitilai near Lombrum on Manus.

        But a lot of those links have faded away and the ignorance about PNG in Australia these days I find appalling. One of the reasons is that the Australia/PNG relationship gets far too neglected at this end – especially by the Australian media.

        On the flight down here yesterday morning I read a copy of The Australian. Now, you don’t get too much coverage of PNG in the Australian print media these days. Australian Associated Press pulled their correspondent out of Port Moresby last year after having had a reporter based there for more than 40 years. But there was a story in yesterday’s Australian – not by AAP but by the French newsagency, AFP.

        It was headed: “Bandits ransack PNG airport”. And it was about how a gang had held people up at Nadzab and robbed them. AFP has nobody in PNG so their report was all quoting the only Australian correspondent left there, Liam Corcoran from the ABC. They did add a comment, however, of their own calling PNG “a poverty hit country”.

        I have a bit of trouble with this constant labelling of PNG as a country of “poverty”. I’ll admit it’s true in the squatter settlements of Port Moresby and Lae but out in the villages I much prefer the label that somebody come up with years ago, “subsistence affluence”. The people of PNG have fed themselves for thousands of years.

        However, I have to agree with some of the discussion we have had when on the subject of food security. There was a suggestion yesterday that perceptions are important and one of the problems is that some believe there is prestige about imported food while the healthy reality is that PNG home grown food is far better for them. My wife, Pauline, spent last Saturday re-fertilizing her aibika patch in our garden in Brisbane.

        The discussion here reminded me of my very first visit to Pauline’s village on Manus. We had been married only a matter of months and when Pauline’s mother and father had come down to Port Moresby for the wedding, I had withdrawn almost all the money I had in my bank account and paid Pauline’s father bride price in quite a large stack of 10 Kina notes. He took the money back to Manus and - to enhance my prestige - he distributed almost the lot to all those who had something to do with Pauline’s upbringing.

The people were so impressed we were invited to function after function in the village where Pauline and I would be seated at the top table and fed the prestige food – bully beef and rice. Those poor people out there in front of us, who seemed to be looking longingly at our plates, had to eat their everyday food – lobster, fresh fish and vegetables straight from their food gardens! I’ll tell you, I wanted to be down there!

        One aspect of this gathering I was pleased to see was the involvement of indigenous Australians. Some years ago, I was invited to Canberra to speak at a function at Parliament House. The theme of my talk was that we white Australians have a misconception about how we are seen in PNG and the rest of the Pacific. We think we are seen as the success story, the wealthy neighbour benignly helping out those less fortunate countries around us who are desperate to emulate us. I told that audience that many people up in PNG and out in the Pacific Islands don’t share that perception. Rather, they see us white Australians as very late comers to this part of the world. It’s almost as if we were a rascal gang from a faraway province who invaded the neighbourhood took over the biggest house, forced the long-time residents into a humpy in the back yard but who now we are attempting to lecture to everybody in the neighbourhood about proper behaviour.

        The other subject I was pleased to see raised on a few occasions was sport. Papua New Guineans love their sport and they are good at it. I think that if the Wallabies had played Will Genia at halfback in every game of their recent tour to Europe we might have won more than one out of the four tests we played against Wales, Ireland, France and England!

        Jessica Siriosi spoke about how delighted she was about how the Bougainvilleans had performed at the recent PNG Games. After that session I went up to Jessica and told her that when I first played for theKumuls in the year of independence, 1975, our captain was a Bougainvillean, Joe Buboi.

        I was hugely honoured when in the following year, 1976, I was elected by my teammates to be captain of the Kumuls. Our only game that year was against a country New South Wales side and my opposing half-back was a teenage Peter Sterling. We won the game and I scored a try. But it was memorable for two other reasons as well. This was all when Pauline’s parents were down from Manus for our wedding and Pauline’s father carried his tomahawk with him everywhere in his billum – even into the grandstands at the Lloyd Robson Oval. At one point when I was tacked rather ferociously by these NSW Country forwards, my brother-in-law, Pana, had to restrain Pauline’s dad from coming down onto the field with the tomahawk to attack them!

        Also in that game I learnt what harsh critics Papua New Guineans can be. I attempted a cut-out pass but, unfortunately, it cut out all of our players and was intercepted by the Country NSW winger who went and scored under the posts. A voice from the crowd called out, “He’s just trying to help his wantoks!”               

        Finally, I must also congratulate Papua New Guinea on something I had not realised before this gathering here at the Lowy Institute over the past two days – PNG’s brave attempt to try to abolish prostitution. You may be surprised to hear that because I was too! And I am not sure it is working all too well because of the lack of effective policing but it is the first time I have heard about that regulation that no woman in PNG is allowed to be undertake employment between 6pm and 6am!

I would like to thank the Lowy Institute for inviting me down here for this Emerging Leaders Dialogue. Rebuilding people to people relationships is the key to improving the whole Australia/Papua New Guinea relationship. It is a great initiative. I hope you people all keep in contact from here on because that will be the real strength of this venture. Deepening and widening the links between us. Perhaps even getting to the stage where we can become wantoks in both friendship and mutual respect.

2014 Participants of the Australia Papua New Guinea Young Emerging Leaders Dialogue. 

Watut River Communities welcomes NRI Review into Mine Benefits in Bulolo.

The Union of Watut River Communities Association Incorporated, a Community Based Organization that deals with Mining Impact, Environment and Community Development since 2009 based in Bulolo District of Morobe Province has welcome the report conducted by the National Research Institute to review and assess benefit-sharing arrangements of large-scale Mining Activities in Wau-Bulolo.

UoWRCA Inc President, Mr. Reuben Mete thanks Bulolo District Bulolo Joint District Planning and Budget Priorities Committee (JDP&BPC) under the chairmanship of the Member for Bulolo, Hon. Sam Basil for commissioning of such vital studies into the district  with the view to assess the benefits flow from the Hidden Valley Mine and its impact on the development within the mine impact communities and the broader Bulolo District specific in that the 2005 Memorandum of Understanding (MOA) which is undergoing review.

Mete said the study has put to light some assumptions the communities has in question the sustainable development model used by mining companies such as that of the Hidden Valley - a joint-venture company owned equally by Harmony Gold Mining Company of South Africa and Newcrest Mining Limited of Australia. Despite having benefits, especially mining royalties, from the Hidden Valley gold mining project flow to the National Government, Provincial Government, Local-Level governments and host land owners, communities living out of mine and out of sight who were not party to the MOA has seen minimum benefits compare to international standards and guidelines and has nothing to show for but only negative impacts of socio – economy and environment.

“We are now calling on the Member for Bulolo, Morobe Provincial Government and the Respective Government agencies such as the Department of Mining and Mineral Resources Authority to seriously look into the five (5) findings and recommendations put forward by the NRI report and find amicable ways to address it,” Mete said.

Mete also calls for an inclusion of the communities along Labu, Wampar, Lower Watut and Middle Watut to be included in the benefit sharing agreements in the current reviewed MOA. He said the Organization has made commitments to disseminate the copies of the studies to the communities living along Watut and Markham River so that they can have access, be informed and made informed decisions for the sake of our future generation. Mete said an Awareness Exercise and Community Empowerment Plan has already been put forward and will commence mid this month to end of next month. 

Isolated and Remote Watut village to build own Elementary School.

President of the Union of Watut River Communities Association Incorporated (UoWRCA Inc) Mr Reuben Mete says early child care and development is very important as it provides a foundation for a prosperous and sustainable society. Children aging from age zero to six must be given 

support and opportunity for child’s growth and development which include nutrition, hygiene, cognitive, social, physical and emotional development. 

Mete made the comment when officiating the ground breaking ceremony of Givekes Elementary School in Middle Watut, Morobe Province. The success of a child future depends largely on quality education and mentors. The Elementary School will now be build on volunteers and good will of the community which comes as a result of the Givekes village initiatives without government assistant. 

Elementary school o early child care is very important because it is a period when the brain is developing very fast, and is flexible. The child’s experiences in seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling all contributes to the early learning and setting of the belief system. Mr. Mete challenges the rural communities to start looking at their child with a different perspective. “We must realize that the child at the very early age is already a thinker and a decision maker and not just a passive observer”, Mete said. 

Givekes village is in Middle Watut of Bulolo District Morobe Province however, there has been no Education, Health and other basic government infrastructures and services found in the area. It is also a mine impacted communities given the multi million kina Hidden Valley project operated by Australia’s Newcrest Mining Limited and South African Harmony Gold Limited however the benefits receive from such has been zero to this date.

Watut Communities launched Roof Over Head Plan.

Mr. Titi presented with the roofing iron in
Kapin village, Middle Watut.

The simple subsistence farmers who live in thatched roof of kunai grass houses in Middle Watut may now put some smile on their faces after Union of Watut River Communities Association Incorporated (UoWRCA Inc) launched its Roof over Head Plan (RoHP) this year. The President of UoWRCA Inc and Community Development advocator Mr. Reuben Mete when presenting the iron roof, ridge cap and nails to Lazarus Titi of Sambus village in Middle Watut says for too long our rural people have been deprived of their rights of accessing basic government services and thus making life more complicated and difficult. 

Lazarus Titi was the first recipient of the RoHP which saw him receiving 16 eight foot roofing iron, 3 ridge cap, 2 packet roofing nail, 4 packet three inch nail, 3 packet four inch nail and 2 packet six inch nail. Mr. Titi when thanking Mr. Mete and UoWRCA Inc for the initiatives highlighted that traditional kunai roof which was a burden for his wife when it comes to roof maintenance every two years would be now a thing of the past. The other building materials such as timbers will be sourced from the forest as there are many trees and logs that are available for the local usage. 

Mr. Mete says UoWRCA Inc plans to put iron roof over 1,500 heads this year 2015 but need additional support of saw mills and chain saw from other relevant organization including government bodies. Mete said the initiatives to help assist families was to strengthen communities social structure as well as spiritual and ethical growth and transformation which should start from inside the house first and then to the communities and societies. The UoWRCA Inc has been initiated in 2009 and has since plays important key roles in driving change into Middle Watut of Morobe Province in Papua New Guinea. 

Importance of Sustainable Development – Australia & Papua New Guinea Relationship.

Sustainable Development can be best defined as “Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs,” according to the World Commission on Environment and Development’s (Oxford University Press, 1987).

Sustainable Development is only used when human beings put dollars and cents before common sense. This is a developing countries phenomenon. (Mete, R, 2014.) Despite often being labeled as a “mountain of gold floating in a sea of oil” Papua New Guinea or Papua New Guineans, have yet to experience the benefits promised by mining and other extractive industries (MPI, 2012). With poor education standards, increasing infant mortality and declining services all contributing to a static Human Development Indicator, Papua New Guinea have a right to question the assumption that ‘ extractive industries brings development’.

Australian miners have staked Papua New Guinea, where the incredible prospectivity is enough to outweigh its challenging operating environment, as a brave new mineral frontier. But the ever challenging balancing act of operations versus landowner concerns threatens to turn the Pacific elephant country allure into an elephant graveyard for careless miners.  

Melbourne-based Newcrest Mining Ltd is the most prominent face of a new generation of Australian miners trying to tap opportunities in the Pacific. Pascoe A, in Australia’s Paydirt article published in September 2012 says while Australians have long dominated PNG’s mining sector, the nation has been revived as a hot frontier for Australian miner delving into elephant country as traditional minerals domains dry up.

Australian miners are no strangers to making mines work in highly challenging environment – notably in Sub-Saharan Africa in the past decade; where they have been credited with bringing along their high domestic standards in occupational health and safety to other countries. The Federal Government sponsored mining for Development initiatives to build on that reputation in the realm of community development. However, the evidence suggests the quality control exported by Australians in the Pacific is more problematic.

Perhaps this reflects the ignominious legacy of Australian miners in PNG – namely the Ok Tedi, Panguna and Watut River by Hidden Valley catastrophes, the former arguable among the worst mining environmental disaster ever, the other partly responsible for a war (Bougainville) which killed 16,000 people including women and children.

The historical implications isn’t a good start given companies are working with a state and bureaucracy rife corruption, which appear to have intensify with the development of the US15.7 billion PNG LNG project in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. Operated by ExxonMobil-subsidiary Esso Highlands Ltd, the LNG  projects has ignited renewed interest in the nation’s resources sector and the two governments fighting for leadership rights prior to the recent election have both sought to capitalize on that.

In Papua New Guinea, this means, for example, amending the Environmental Act to allow Ramu Nico to deposit tailings into the ocean. And while miners may see the lax regulatory environment as a necessary trade-off given the steeper risk gradient they undertake by trying to build projects in Papua New Guinea, the down side may outweigh the benefits.

The concerns of landowners have tended to be the bigger casualties of the recent new push for investment as a weak regulatory environment makes the corporate social responsibility requirement set by the government more opaque. However, as Rio Tinto Ltd found out in Bougainville – and as the new generation of miners are beginning to discover; Papua New Guinea is not a country where miners and developers can afford to pay lip services to landowner’s discontent regardless of the level of engagement required by government. 

It is time now that the young people in both Papua New Guinea and Australia look for opportunities that are being available such as Dialogues and Conferences to empower youth’s participation and sharing information through the Information Communication Technologies platform that are available and use them to get their voices to be heard. In addition, young people should rediscover themselves as young men and women – future leaders for tomorrow, reclaim that the source of action and responsibilities lies within our self. The next step is to think globally and to think humanity as a single moral community linked by mutual responsibility. The youth population of today should be encouraged to participate more actively on this journey. The young generation should act responsibly now, because older we are, the deeper our roots are in the past and less able we are to see ways in which the future is developing.

Flaws in environment and mining laws with duplicate responsibilities of government regulators, absent of impact assessments and baseline data can be identified as the barrier to Sustainable Development. According to Australia’s Paydirt (2012) article, Newcrest PNG Manager Peter Aitsi argues that landowner discontent reflects a lack of manpower in the government departments charged with overseeing regulation of the resources sector. “The kind of support the agencies responsible for the sector are given is very poor,” Aitsi told Paydirt in Port Moresby. “So as a result, some of the frustrations we’re seeing from our communities are intensifying because of the lack of confidence within the process, and that can only be restored if we have functioning, better resourced government representation.” But Dr Gavin Mudd, a Melbourne-based environmental engineer specializing in mining who regularly visits Papua New Guinea said while the track record of Australian miners in PNG was partly an indictment on government, that didn’t make it a get-out-of-jail-free card. “Miners can’t just complain that government isn’t pulling its weight,” Dr. Mudd said. “At the end of the day they’re in control.” (MPI, 2012).

Another bi cause of landowner agitation is the lack of transparency and communication by developers with affected communities. Many land owners in Papua New Guinea are being “starved of information” and  the developers are not paying enough attention to the risk that presented. Most developers easily underestimated the concerns and impacts of landowners. This is a basic risk management, and you cannot break that sort of perception by being secretive – you’ve got to be open.

Papua New Guinea should by now develop own policies and regulations to guide Sustainable Development. This is the call every Papua New Guinea landowners should raised with their political leaders to hold them responsible enough to promote Sustainable Development.

Given the reality that Papua New Guinea have a total of eight mines, by which three of these are purely gold mines, three gold and silver mines, one copper and gold and one nickel and copper. These make the country one of the world’s resource rich nations, and pumps about three quarters of revenue into the country’s economy. However, the management of mine tailings disposal is said to have been overlooked over the years by government, developers and stakeholders causing a national threat on the health of future generations, particularly on our mass rural population.

According to the Constitutional and Law Reform Commission of Papua New Guinea, It is strongly recommended that the government should seriously look at the environment, health and social impacts of all extractive industries rather than concentrating more on the revenue generation.

There should also be call to Australian Government to impose stricter standards on miner’s overseas practice and the government silence implied consent for repugnant behavior. The Australian government does not seem to mind if the actions of Australian miners lead to the destruction of lives and livelihoods of Papua New Guinean. Papua New Guinea and the Pacific are ripe with opportunities for miners and in so, Papua New Guinea Government needs to ensure it’s ready for it. This means that people who come in and do the right thing by the communities they operate in, and do the right thing by the Government that gives them the license to do so.

Papua New Guinea is a very prospective country. But it’s not just a matter of how many tonnes of metal you’ve got in the ground; it’s actually how you spread the value from that, making sure you generate more benefits than you do impacts. 

Access to pornography via internet a major concern.

The availability and accessibility of illicit material ranging from pornography to demonology and Satanism over the internet is become a major concern, authorities were told in a regional meeting.

The National reported that a regional meet was hosted by the Censorship Office and Constitutional Law Reform Commission (CLRC) on the review of the 1989 Censorship Act in Lae and a major issue raised was the access of pornography via the internet.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church National Youth Director, Reuben Mete, questioned the regulation of uploading and sharing of pornographic and illicit videos on social media networks which he described as dangerous.

NICTA legal services manager, Ivan Milleng, responded that a cyber-crime policy would address these issues. He said sites that share pornography and illicit material would be blocked when the government endorses the policy.


The meeting which attended by the Minister for Community Development, Chief Censor, CLRC Secretary, officials from NICTA and PNG Customs, was a review of the Censorship Act to include electronic media.