SEAFARERS: THE FORGOTTEN WORKERS

IN an ideal consumer world consumers must have their product and businesses must make their profit and we forget the rest of the equation – the workers.

Without the workers there is not product and there is no profit.

In order to get something done or out on the market, workers must go through various difficulties, which often times the consumers don’t even see and the businesses sometimes see but shy away.

This is the story of some of the workers who society hardly sees – the seafarers on fishing boats. They spend much of their time out at sea in some of the roughest conditions but what do they get for this? “Very little,” says one of them.

“We work long hours, we get no time off and the pay doesn’t reflect these conditions. We are denied some of our entitlements and if we complain they send us home,” said another seafarer.

In the last few years, Norman (not his real name) has been trying to organise the RD Tuna seafarers’ workers in order to set a platform where they can raise their concerns. This hasn’t been very easy as the company continuously dismantles the group by moving the workers or laying them off or telling them to affiliate with other union bodies or asking them to withdraw or resign.

Currently RD employs more than 100 Papua New Guineans as seafarers who are working on its fishing fleet. However, the men who are spearheading the organising of a seafarers maritime union group for these workers are being laid off and this makes it difficult for this group of workers to negotiate for better working conditions and pay.

The seafarers have tried talking with company officials, the PNG Maritime Transport Workers Union, the PNG Labour Office Representative in Madang and Port Moresby, and the RD National Workers union to no avail for the last 12 months. At the Minimum Wages Board Hearing in Madang on November 7, 2008, these seafarers presented their cases and were advised to affiliate with the PNG Maritime Transport Workers Union.

With the RD National workers union, the seafarers have been told they do not fit, as this union only deals with the land-based workers. They were told they are based on sea and therefore their issues would be different and so they must affiliate with the PNG Maritime Transport Workers Union. To affiliate with the PNG Maritime Transport Workers Union has not been easy for these workers as the company refuses to pay their affiliation fees. When the company learnt that the seafarers had paid their own affiliation fees without waiting for the deductions, they called a meeting and asked the men to withdraw.

Already 57 seafarers have paid their membership but are now asked to withdraw and join the land-based RD National Workers Union. As this run around continues, the workers grievances are not being dealt with. All these workers want is that the promised entitlements are paid.

A letter from Industrial Registrar, Helen N. Saleu, dated 30 March 2009 advised the seafarers “that the workers of RD fishing if they have not joined the RD National Workers Union that Section 33 of the said Act (Industrial Organisations Act) together with the rules of the said unions qualifies the workers at RD fishing to join membership with the PNG Maritime and Transport Workers Union.”

Ms Saleu said, “the workers rights must be respected. In that respect, the RD National Workers Union executive and the PNG Maritime and Transport Workers union should reach mutual understanding on the matter and advise the RD Tuna resident Director Mr Jun Austentico accordingly. Mr Austentico must respect the right of the workers in allowing the right to join unions of their choice.”

However, their efforts to affiliate with a union body has been made difficult and at the time of writing many of these workers have been ‘misplaced’, asked to resign, or taken off the payroll. The workers said, “all we want is to raise these concerns with the company we work with so that they can correct these practices for the benefit of all of us. There was no need to give us a run around.”

The seafarerers claim that;

They were paid no overtime even though their duties exceeded the normal eight hours a day. They said they work on boats and while they are given some time off, it is hard to take time off on boats as that is their place of work.

Personal life insurance and medical cover were not taken seriously. They said when the Dolores Vessel 830 sank on the night of January 11, 2007 at Bismarck sea, the PNG crew lost all their personal belongings and experienced the ordeal and were compensated only K700 each.

They said incentives and or bonuses were denied the PNG crew which they say is compulsory to all crew members regardless of position and nationality. They said only the Filipino crew enjoyed these benefits.

The also said that at the start of work they sign contracts which the company has not honoured these work agreements. They said when they finished a contract their entitlements are never paid. They said a contract is an agreement between them and the company and while they observed their part of the contract the company has not done its part.

PNG is a member of the ILO and therefore has ratified the conventions on the Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise, 1948 and the Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining, 1948. This gives workers and employers alike in Papua New Guinea the right to organise, to form and to join any unions of their choice. This right is also found in the National Constitution of this country and which protects citizens of this country.

The seafarers are currently seeking legal advise on this issue.

CUBAN HEALTH SYSTEM: AN OPTION FOR PNG

COMING back from a field trip, a family joined me and my colleagues on a two-hour walk to the nearest airstrip in Josephstaal. In my company was the wife with their infant child. The husband and wife were taking their baby to the government-run health centre at the Josephstaal station in Madang province.
I stood on the side and made way for her to go first saying "the line at the clinic will be long by the time you get there."
She brushed this aside and told me as we continued to walk, "no its the harvest season and the health workers there will be out in their gardens harvesting yams. When we get there we will have to wait or go to the health workers' house or garden and call them."
Then she gave a squeal as she kick a root in the path and I jumped thinking of snakes.
In a while she settled down and told me, one of her breasts was swollen so badly every time she bumped something or walked too fast it gives her this stinging pain. Then she turned around and showed me, a fully swollen breast. I told her she must go to Madang to get proper medical attention. This would be a three day walk for her before she gets to the nearest PMV pick up point.
For the rest of the walk I didn't hear the woman talk as I wondered about the health worker in the garden when the sick were waiting at the health centre. I thought about the child who went to the Children's Outpatient at Angau Memorial Hospital in Lae, Morobe province seeking help and died there. I thought about the many women who have died from breast cancer.
My companion on this walk took her condition as it came to her, without complaint. She understood she could get help from the nearest health centre however, she is not able to complain if the health worker is not there to treat her and her baby quickly.
As we talked I realised she dosen't know her condition could be serious.
This woman represents the many women and mothers in this country who must often put up with health workers whether it is in urban or rural areas. It is a shame money has overrode the humanity in many health workers. While many health workers are genuinely concerned about helping the sick, it is unfortunate that those in the frontline smear the image of the health service in this country.
This woman from Josephstaal is one in more than 15,000 people from this district, the three or so health workers in that district must deal with. However, the health workers often have other priorities and the sick must wait and the sick have chosen to hold back.
Over time these attitudes of health workers have taken their toll and it is time, the PNG Health system is overhauled so that every sick person is attended to in time regardless.
One of the systems that PNG has started looking into since 2006 is the Cuban health system in which Cuba offered 200 doctors initially and to train up young Papua New Guineans in medicine to serve in rural areas.
This system has sent out thousands of doctors to live and serve the people in rural areas. Women and children do not have to walk far to receive treatment or arrive at the health centre and find the health worker not there. This system offers a 24-hour service and there is at least one doctor for every village.
This Cuban health system is not just sending out Cuban doctors, it is also offering scholarships for students to study medicine in Cuba. Already from the Asia-Pacific; Solomon Island, Vanutau, Kiribati, Nauru, Tonga and Timor Leste have sent students. The results have been tremendous for Kiribati and Timor Leste since they started earlier on in this program.
While Papua New Guinea has expressed interest it has not moved further to accepting the Cuban offer. PNG is currently experiencing impacts of climate change and health is one of the sectors that will be impacted. PNG is also currently experiencing cholera epidemic and health workers must be pulled from other sections creating gaps there. This is critical where women and children are concerned.
The Cubans also train their doctors to prepare for natural disasters. For instance when Hurricane Katrina hit the US in 2006 1500 Cuban doctors were packed and ready to go.
This is the spirit of true service, if Papua New Guinea really wants to deal with its sick then it must open up to these opportunities. The health service can do better then receive negative criticisms while the sick continue to die.
To have access to health care is a right, and many people including women and children will continue to stand on side and wait while health workers refuse to attend to them unless the government wakes up and do something right for its people.

SEE NO, HEAR NO, SPEAK NO DISSENT

An American living in Papua New Guinea has been accused of fanning anit-asian sentiments in the country. See her response.

http://nancysullivan.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/10/see-no-dissent-hear-no-dissent-speak-no-dissent-the-national-newspaper-and-rh.html

FIX ROADS TO INCREASE EMPLOYMENT

ON THURSDAY October 29 the Post Courier published on its front page a photo story by Mathias Kin of Simbu men trying to bring coffee into Kundiawa.
This is a very sorry story of coffee farmers in Simbu and all other farmers all over the country. To travel 50km for a full 24 hours is a very big shame for their leaders. Instead of the vehicle aiding them they were practically carrying the vehicle with all their coffee inside.
Other farmers with no access to vehicles have no choice but to shoulder the coffee bags to the nearest pick up point which is often two or more days away. Other farmers have tried to airlift their produce and ferry them on small boats but all these have proven to be very costly exercises and the farmer goes home with almost nothing.
It has never been an easy ride into town with the coffee or the cocoa. Time and time again elected members have ignored the plight of these farmers and have not put the electoral development funds to fixing the roads even though they make these promises during their election campaigns.
As climate change is high on the agenda now with constant rains and landslides rural coffee and cocoa farmers will be hard hit as the road conditions continue to deteriorate further. The agriculture department and commodity boards must put some serious thoughts into assisting the farmers.
Coffee and cocoa have brought in cash for communities and have sent many elites of today to school. They helped villagers buy trucks and build good houses however, this was short lived. This story has changed since the good part of the roads stopped less than ten kilometres out of town.
Coffee and cocoa are grown in some of the most difficult locations in the country. A farmer in a remote village in PNG is able to produce more than one bag of coffee which should fetch him about K3 per kilo. However, very little support is given to the farmers and so the produce is locked up in the communities and money is lost the government continues to design poverty reduction strategies.
This Post Courier picture demonstrates the willingness and the determination of farmers to make these crops work for them. How often have they pushed and carried these vehicles with their coffee and cocoa bags in them and none of the promises for good roads have been realised in the last 20 years or more.
Despite these poor road conditions and price fluctuations cocoa and coffee have kept the bulk of the population employed at the village level. This is system that is friendly to the local population as they keep their homestead and produce a crop that has fetched a name for Papua New Guinea and cash for the villager. They keep urban migration down and they encourage the young to be creative.
One thing that has come out as a result of their determination to bring their produce to the markets is that young village boys have taught themselves how to fix vehicles and to manoeuvre their vehicles in some of the roughest conditions in this country.
The poor road conditions keep women from gaining some economic independence and so they are stuck in the villages with no hope of moving up even though they are very active in maintaining the small coffee plantations, picking, washing and drying, they are not able to get to sell the produce.
Some companies have tried sending vehicles to pick up the produce however, these road conditions certainly give no hope for the vehicles. They blow up maintenance costs for the companies and the risks associated with carry heavy load on poor road conditions do not promise that the produce will arrive safely at the factories. They have since given up.
The government’s approach to encouraging development by foreign investors takes all these determination away from its own people. Instead it encourages rural urban drift in search of employment with no promise of housing, and better working conditions. It takes away the creativity in young people and it pushes women further into poverty as she must now look for land and time to grow food for her family as the money she makes from her now formal employ is insufficient.
The only way Papua New Guinea can maintain its image as a nation of rich people is to fix the road. Rich in this sense means people can maintain control and diversity at their will and still bring the produce to the market. They have the land and the determination to make it work.
The leaders must find it in themselves to do this one thing right for its people.

REDD: A COVER FOR EMITTERS

DEFORESTATION and degradation is said to account for 25% of the world’s total emissions and therefore REDD is an important tool to help combat emissions in forestry.
However, polluters and emitters have jumped on this opportunity to make forest communities shoulder the responsibility by keeping their trees standing while they continue to pollute without giving these people the opportunity to understand how this will work. Huge sums of money are promised giving zero thought to livelihoods in these communities.
Already several communities in Papua New Guinea have jumped on the bandwagon ahead of the rest of the world as REDD is still being debated. Papua New Guinea is very complex as 97% of the land is owned by customary landowners. The promises have created uncertainties and more problems for forest communities in this country but the polluters do not care. They would rather get a cover quickly and continue doing business as usual.
Would paying people money to keep their trees standing help stop pollution from other sources of emissions? Would it help remove the guilt from polluting?
To pay for a green seat on an airplane or train doesn’t do it. Every individual has the responsibility to help save this place we call home. Making little people in some far off small forest communities take the responsibility for your travel, your eating, your living or the way you do business is not going to solve the climate crisis.
The norm has been that little people bear the brunt when things get difficult. Promises of huge sums of money often do not work for these people as greedy people get in way. Polluters will never try to do something right for a change as greed is so deeply embedded in their system they will just pass the bug.
A country must set must targets to reduce its emissions. This means reduction in all sectors. Papua New Guinea was one of the countries that identified deforestation as one of the main sources of emissions and has a goal of reducing emissions including that from the forestry sector by 50% by 2015. A very ambitious target as it encourages 10 more fish canneries in Madang, two coal power stations also in Madang, a gas project that will travel through four provinces, and numerous mining projects across the country while logging continues.
Forest communities live very basic life, the kind of life that climate change solutions are encouraging yet, richer nations or the developed world are having trouble adjusting to.
Life in the forests is the life that development aid agencies are putting money to help move these people up to live like those in the developed world. Now climate change presents problems that suggest people must live basic lives.
Trees do have a role in the eco-system and over years they have been taken for granted.
This time in the climate discussions, they have been on the top of the agenda and while those closest to them have not been the main speakers some hard decisions must be made in Copenhagen this December. For trees to stand Copenhagen must decide against loggers, full stop!
Money must not be the determining factor and emitters must not think that they can get away with the guilt.

K441 MILLION LOAN FOR PMIZ?

PAPUA New Guinea’s Trade and Industry Minister Gabriel Kapris is off to China end of this month to secure the loan of K441m for the Pacific Marine Industrial Zone (PMIZ) project in Madang.
Minister Kapris is adamant the project must go ahead despite resistance on the ground. Now he wants to commit Papua New Guinea to a loan agreement from the Export-Import Bank of China.
Loans have not worked well for Papua New Guinea with its experiences with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Many of the loan conditions have not helped third world nations but have pushed them further into poverty.
Now Papua New Guinea is turning on to China. Would the loan from Export-Import Bank of China be any different? In 2006 the Chinese government announced an K800 million loan funding for the Pacific however, no request was received from the Pacific community. This visit by the minister will be important to secure to K441 million hopefully from this K800 million.
Loans from China often require that 50% of the procurement and work must be by Chinese. While negotiations for this loan could take longer, the PMIZ is a priority project and therefore the chances of getting the loan are high.
The PMIZ promise millions of kina return for Papua New Guinea and while much of the resources have been developed, the state of the country does not reflect the millions of kina that these projects promise to bring. Under the Special Economic Zone PMIZ will be excluded from the country's rules and regulations thus one of the single biggest loss for this third world nation will be revenue loss from taxes.
Instead of experiencing an improved standard of living few Papua New Guineans have been working hard to help recover these loans while the majority of Papua New Guineans are standing in line for jobs promised at the beginning of all development projects.
IMF has warned that countries borrowing from them may face slow recoveries. Too much reliance on foreign aid is perhaps not the best solution for Papua New Guinea.
Furthermore Minister Kapris said on national radio Tuesday night (October 13th) that the National Executive Council’s approval highlighted the government’s support for a sector that would continue to sustain the country once its mineral wealth ran out.
This contradicts Alfredo Fernandez’s report in August where he said fish canneries in the Philippines are folding up and coming to Papua New Guinea because fish stocks in their waters are depleting.
Also on Wednesday October 14^th the National Newspaper carried a story on ‘the climate to affect PNG’s tuna stock’. Here Professor Saulei of the Forest Research Institute said in the next 20-30 years tuna stocks will decline as a result of climate change.
While Fernandez and Saulei both raised the alarm bells of potential losses in the fishing industry, the Minister brushes these aside saying the marine industrial park in Madang should proceed.
Climate change poses a greater risk now then ever before because of the growing human population and Papua New Guinea’s population growth rate is raising some concerns.
The PMIZ is talking about 30,000 jobs and this makes it even more critical and the influx of people flooding into Madang in search of work opportunities has already begun.
Papua New Guinea is said to be sitting right on the tuna belt where tuna stocks are plentiful now and is also one of the last remaining breeding grounds for tuna. The PMIZ is said to bring in 10 more fish canneries and all would be fishing in the breeding ground. This doesn’t give much hope for the future of the fishing industry.
The resource that will outlive mineral resources as Minister Kapris would like to believe will disappear just like the non-renewable resources he named. Animals have become extinct as a result of human activities and changes in the climate.
While Minister Kapris promises thousands of jobs and spin-off businesses, an international airport in Madang and loads of tourists he has chosen not to talk about the resource that will make this project possible – the fish nor how the loan will affect the people.
Loans have not worked for Papua New Guinea except put it on the list of nations with outstanding debts. Can Papua New Guinea do something right with the pot of riches it has now before everything runs dry. Wells do run dry and so will the natural resources.

WHO CAN STOP THE RAIN

ITS been raining almost all year now in Papua New Guinea, and who can stop it? Obviously no one can and so we get under roofs and avoid getting wet but what about everything else.
Soon we will get hungry and we must get out in the rain to get food or attend to our food crops or our pigs and chicken.
So as we curse the rain and ask why it should rain now, we should also be asking why it is not normal for these rains this planting and harvesting season? We should be asking why our planting season has been prolonged and thank God that our crops have matured quickly.
Rain is the main source of water supply. We need water to water our crops, to quench our thirst, to remove dirt and more.
But this year its been raining buckets and buckets full and the food crops are drowning. Who will save the food crops? Or are they just plants? Humans and animals are happy with the abundance of water especially in areas where the dry spell is usually long. The rains are a blessing but are posing threat on food production.
The rains are filling up the water ways and are helping to move farming land elsewhere but mainly into the seas. So as land is slipping away under our feet, loggers, miners and agriculturalists are not helping the situation by disturbing land forms so that they give up and escape when the rains come.
The rains will continue, unless someone corrects his or her attitudes towards the environment he or she lives in. Attitudes about looking after the environment, about conducting good agriculture practices and attitudes about consumerism must change. Those doing logging and mining must look for best ways in order to minimise soil loss.
This world needs people to take care of it or the rains will continue.
In Papua New Guinea, 10,000 years ago a group of people in what is now the Waghi valley in Western Highlands Province went through a long period of rain and had to take some quick actions to save their food crops thus maintaining their food supply in a time of climate crisis. They dug drains to allow water to escape so that their food will grow. This was the beginning of modern agriculture in this country and it has gained international recognition.
From the animal and plant world, new species are emerging or re-emerging as they find the wet conditions favourable. The challenge is for people to find out if they are edible, something the ancestors did many thousands of years ago. Only now the human population must rely on scientists. Bush meat and food from the forests and seas have been given very little significance as capitalism encourages the human population to eat from cans, packets and bottles. To eat packaged food will encourage the rains to continue.
Millions of people are being washed away in floods, tidal waves or buried in landslides and those living continue to live as if human life means nothing. Our attitudes must change now and those in positions of power must recognise the traditional way of life, that food from nature is available in abundance, that we need to up skill the vulnerable communities to respond proactively to difficult climatic conditions. We must put off some fires and give this world a chance.