We can’t be tigers so let’s try to be pussycats

TONY FLYNN

PAPUA NEW GUINEA may look like a Pacific tiger economy from Waigani (see Peter O’Neill’s recent comments); but to most of us it appears as a mangy old tabby cat.

There seems to be no real appreciation that our domestic economic policies are inept. Our leaders are focussed on export markets to the virtual exclusion of locally consumed articles.

We should not be bringing lamb flaps into remote areas of Papua New Guinea. After 37 years of independence, there should be small abattoirs and freezers in the main district towns.

And why is Wau not shipping meat to Lae and Port Moresby?

Every major market should have a livestock area for goats, sheep, pigs and other livestock.

Successful farmers employ people. As a moderately successful farmer, I employ more than 50 men and women on an experimental farm.

More farmers mean more local employment and can stem the flow of people to the squatter settlements of the cities.

Very few of our arable farmers are much more than exploiters of the soil; they exhaust the soil and move on.

As we develop real farmers we will also develop a local job market. If we do not become "tigers" at least we will be fat pussycats.

Comments

[Flinstone Segeben]

Yeah and that mangy old tabby cat is running scared with development coming after it and not going after development as it should.

PNG seem to be all over the place with its development with the government saying one thing but doing the exact opposite. We want development but the government seems confused on how to go after it so in our confusion it is coming after us.

If the government is serious about development it should evaluate all its performance to find out its weakness and strenght then come up with a cohesive yet realistic plan then go after development thus knowing what you want and its benefit for the people and how to correctly get there.

In other words PNG should effectively take control of its own development and not let development dictate to us what to do.

[Orovu Sepoe]

Keep talking and tune up your voice, Tony. 100 plus 100 percent support.

[Mark Schubert]

Tony, while I was Community Affairs Manager for part of the PNG LNG project in Hela, I realised that any business spinoffs meant for the local clans had been long taken by others in POM.

The dependence of local Hela clans on employment on such short term projects was little short of destructive, with the underlying notion that food comes from cash.

Many had stopped planting their gardens, so my focus became getting them back to doing that and turning their gardens into more than just for subsistence.

Getting input from projects to help us do that - broaden the local crop base and get goods to market - was met with a blank stare as if it was not part of any program. It wasn't.

My point is that, yes, so many of the answers for PNG are already present in PNG and are part of the culture. Often it is simply a matter of modifying and tuning them for a world wider than just the local area.

[Don Tapio]

Agree with Mr Flynn, a lot of hot air and justification over this bank loan.

O'Neill if you are serious about addressing unemployment and law and order, look under your nose. The Labor Department is the most corrupt and underperforming department since independence.

There are qualified Papua New Guineans walking the towns' and cities' streets engaging in crime to support themselves, because some Chinese, Indonesian, Malaysian or Pakistani is employed as 'specialised skilled labor' especially in the extractive resource industry.