Worst People & Worst Places: I walk into a wall of Dependency

Leonard Fong Roka

Somewhere in the south coast of Madang town is Ward 17, in local level government (LLG) terms. A unkempt feeder road cuts through the LLG of some 10 000 people; and, neatly lined on neither side of the road are swaying mango trees and areca nut palms that catches my breathe because I am a chewer.

I jostled into this place on a wet Friday, 15 March 2013, with my other Year 3 course mates of Divine Word University to search for the peoples’ ideas about their perceptions and experience of community development and their will to develop as part of our assignment.

But, sadly what I heard and saw was not what I do witness in by Panguna District on Bougainville in the northern Solomons. Our subjects said everything they were facing, or should be done for the betterment of their community was with the government; more than 30 years we have being independent, so the government should now bring development to us now.

Our driver got us in front of a section of the ward they were calling, Baur village. I learned later, that Ward 17 LLG was made up of two villages that were Baur and Bilbil (Bilbil were new comers into the area thus they did not own much of the customary land). The ward has its own primary school; a tertiary type institution, and even a steady supply of electricity available, but to connect to a household, one has to have the money for the bills to the supplier, the PNG Pawa.

We were ushered by a leader into a semi-permanent house of low standards. Surrounding it, at a hand’s reach, were sago thatched huts; two modern standard tombs; a poorly constructed poultry hut on a muddy lawn and a lone skinny woman who kept an open eye on me from one of this Stone Age shelters with her unkempt child regularly intimidating her concentration on the dialogue.

To the elders we gathered, all claimed that, apart from the feeder road, the primary school and the electricity grid line stretching through their midst, there was no government service for their ward. One leader said: ‘The government proposes development projects here but they do not execute those promises. NGOs you know of in Madang are also like the government, they come to Baur to show off and tell us of projects like water and off they go. We ran after them but they will not be bothered by your presence in their office’.

One thing I worked out is that, despite the said economic boom of Madang, the provincial administration lacks efficiency and effectiveness in it service delivery mechanism. ‘Madang district,’ one of the leaders proved my reasoning, ‘has only one single car and that is the problem when the administration wants to broaden its reach to the whole of Madang district’. But as our team questioned him further, he added: ‘In Madang, we hear of money being delivered to the province but we do not know where that money ends up in’.

In the light of community development process that involves self-help, the Baur people exactly did not have a vision to strive and will for advancement in order to change their standards of living or initiate development. To them, from the youth to the leaders, development was the government’s business. The government has their money and thus, has to help them up. The government has to built them toilets, water supply, houses, even maintained their run-down schools and churches; these were governmental responsibilities because they have voted them just for that.

Despite having community created development structures on the ground, negligence plays the upper most eroding agent and thus all good plans goes to rest as people look towards the Madang provincial government for change.

My eyes kept aching as it searched for the truth of why an indigenous people of Madang just cannot attain advancement on their own land. My eyes frisked the silhouette: all family houses were of all bush materials; some have cartons for the walling; others had blue canvases for the internal walling and many were subjected to deterioration.

A younger man told me: ‘As natives of Madang, today we do not have the freedom to claim ownership of any development in this province’. He pointed out that between them and the Madang towns there are strange settlers from the Sepiks and the Highlands and many others that prevail over them. Thus, their freedom is suppressed and their minds cannot be broadened.

In such a situation we think of belittlement, relegation, and exploitation that come into play in this province that is hosting few of the mining boom stories of PNG.

Since arriving in 2011, I have seen the Madang people as some of the most affected people by the influx of people from other provinces. The businesses in the filthy Madang town are controlled by outsiders and topping the list and also increasing in dominance are the Asians. Every shop I walk into in Madang is owned by an Asian whilst the locals are the shop assistants; I was laughing in 2012 watching an Asian company building DWU dormitories having Asian sub-contractors. The gods might have had escaped from Madang?

The poor locals are often subjected to the mercy of outsiders. In February I walked into an Asian restaurant outside DWU, there peeping behind the counter, I had a glimpse of an Asian caressing the local girl’s thigh as the other local girl enjoyed their activities. Later they saw me and the Asian man jumped in to serve me.

I could conclude for her that she had no hope but to succumb to such illicit give-ins, since you are already are nobody when your world as being conquered by aliens.

And the Baur people are not sick people but it is the PNG version of democracy that is killing them from being innovative. In PNG the democracy’s few pillars such as freedom of movement, speech and so on should be seen as the powerhouse of tribalism sprouted corruption that will kill PNG.

Such requires the government to re-think and re-shape what democracy should be in PNG.

My people of Bougainville were the only people that used the barrel of the gun to walk out of this dirty PNG democratic culture. Thus now we have had more control over our land and also, we have the right to decide our future.