by KEVIN PAMBA
Foreign investors taking over businesses reserved for locals
THERE are certain foreign investors
who sell betelnut and lus cigarettes besides their shops in Madang
town.
This is a new bench-mark in how far these “investors” have now
gone to “invest” their money in the country.
Is this the kind of competition one prime minister in the 1990s
was vouching for when he charged that Papua New Guineans were lazy
and restrictions on certain business activities had to be lifted
for foreign investment?
What that prime minister did then can be seen in retrospect as
opening of the flood-gates for these foreign investors to enter
the country.
They are now here in numbers and engaged in virtually every
business activities once reserved for Papua New Guineans even in
the most remote parts of the country.
In a space of a decade since that prime minister made the
decision, these investors are in all urban centres and just about
every known remote district station and engaged in the very
business activities Papua New Guineans have been doing under State
protection.
Very soon, these investors would compete with Highlanders in
canvassing the rural Madang villages to source betelnut and
coconuts and truck them in bulk to the Highlands.
It is also a matter of time before they start operating PMV buses
and trucks on land and dinghies at sea.
Or maybe they are already doing that in other parts of the country
that I may not be aware.
Some of the foreign investors in Madang are also selling beer
after licensed trading hours.
Not so long ago, black-marketing of beer was a reserve of mostly
struggling Papua New Guineans, who knowingly broke the law to make
ends meet.
The foreign investors deploy platoons of destitute PNG youths onto
the streets and markets armed with cheap, pirated and poor quality
goods to sell.
All the shops of these investors sell the same cheap, pirated and
poor quality goods.
There is no variety and standards across all the shops.
Some of the foreign investors sell electronic goods with
instructions in the manuals in languages and writings other than
English.
They maintain draconian trading rules and stand by them.
For example, they pin up notices such as “Choose carefully, no
exchange and no refund”.
They don’t budge when a customer returns with a device that can
only be
operated with instructions in a foreign language and writing.
There is also talk that some of these foreign investors buy stolen
goods such as mobile phones and cameras and ship them to their
operations in other towns in the country to be resold and vice
versa.
Some of these investors also open their shops on important public
holidays thus denying holiday for the Papua New Guinean employees
and the significance of these days to them.
Then there are the issues of poor wages and workplace health and
safety.
The small people in Madang impacted by these do quietly complain
from time to time, but their concerns remain at that. They do not
get further up the government process.
The aforesaid category of foreign investors are going into
business activities once reserved for Papua New Guineans with
centuries of experience as traders and merchants behind them.
And they are made to compete with a people only exposed to trading
and mercantilism in one lifetime.
Who wins at the end of such an unfair competition is not hard to
tell.
