Brain drain! Australia benefits from PNG's workers

Radio Australia | ABC [extracts]

AUSTRALIA'S RESOURCES BOOM is employing record numbers of highly-trained Papua New Guineans fuelling a growing PNG expatriate community earning high-wages.

And Papua New Guineans have such a good reputation they are getting promoted faster than their Australian counterparts.

Latest estimates suggest up to 3,000 skilled Papua New Guineans have moved to Australia.

Dr Ben Imbun (pictured), a senior lecturer in the School of Management at the University of Western Sydney has been tracking their movements.

He told the ABC’s Jemima Garrett that low wages in PNG are adding to the incentives to join the brain-drain.

“They are doing blue collar workers to white collar managerial supervisory, mine geologists, engineers, so anything within that range, any job,” Dr Imbun said.

“They are paid a lot a year in terms of comparing with what they get up there [in Papua New Guinea]. They get a third of what an expatriate Australian or American or Canadian get up there. So when they have been trickling down and moving here they realise that they are paid as equal as anybody else.”

Dr Imbun believes this would average around $120,000 a year, and says Papua New Guineans tend to get faster promotion than their Australian counterparts.

“The ones coming here are skilled and have worked in some of the quite established mines in Papua New Guinea and have a vast accumulation of experience…. Up in PNG they are more generic or they are able to do everything.”

Dr Imbun said he was surprised that the ‘brain drain’ from PNG had not been noticed by the politicians.

“My opinion is that they do not sit down to prioritise what's really happening, that's why a lot of the countrymen and women are here in Australia doing all these things, but it hasn’t hit [the politicians] yet

Comments

[Fiona Hukula]

I agree with you Jeff Febi.

My concern with brain drain is in the area of academia.
Ben Imbun himself is a good example of a qualified Papua New Guinean who now teaches in an Australian University.

Over the years many experienced lecturers have left the University of PNG for better opportunities and, though this is worrying, we cannot blame them.

We need qualified people to teach at our Universities but they need to be supported with the resources to not only teach but also to conduct sound research that can be published in their respective academic fields of interest.

[Gigil Marme]

Brain drain has both advantages and disadvantages. The good thing is being paid higher wages and sending money to relatives in PNG, greatly boosting the local economy.

On the hand, very soon public and private sectors in PNG will run out of skilled labour. The PNG economy will be at a disadvantage.

[Bernard Yegiora]

We become like the Chinese and the Filipinos. Move there earn more money and support our families back in the villages.

Researchers need to do research on remittance and it's significance to the PNG economy.

[George Kuias]

Well, the PNG government should think seriously about this before all our educated brains start migrating seeking better living conditions and pay packages.

With the rising prices of goods and services etc in PNG, this is an opportunity to be employed overseas.

[M Girey]

This should be a challenge to the PNG politicians, who should look into in improving services and creating more job opportunities with attractive packages.

In such a way, skilled and knowledgeable PNGeans will not search for greener pastures in Aussie,NZ or elsewhere, instead they will remain and develop PNG.

[Bernard Yegiora]

There is a big community in Western Australia.

Jimmy Drekore went down there a year ago to visit some of them and came back with a container load of hand-me down-goods for the Kundiawa General Hospital.

Good to see more Papua New Guineans moving down South because of their skills and knowledge rather then as boat people.

[Phil Fitzpatrick]

I agree with Jeff. I think this is a healthy thing. If Australians are allowed to work in PNG why not the other way around.

With careful controls and a loosening of the Australian visa hoops it might help do for the PNG relationship what Bob Carr and our government seems uninterested in doing.

[Jeff Febi]

I wouldn't worry much many a leaving for Australia except for in the the fields of health and education.

Many send money back to their relatives regularly and this is a real positive.

Also, job spaces are made availabe for many more coming out of our seemingly ever failing education system...so the government only needs to improve and build our education system to educate more and more people to send out to the world.