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Invading PNG, Filipino style
The first batch
of Filipino workers came to PNG in 1974 to help the country run
the various wheels of the economy, writes ALFREDO P HERNANDEZ
IN 1973, the Australian colonial government determined that the
emerging economy of Papua New Guinea needed foreign skills and
expertise to help sustain the needs of the local industries and to
run the various wheels of the economy.
To prepare the country for eventual independence from Australia,
the colonial rulers launched a massive recruitment exercise
targeting Filipino workers.
The "Pinoys", as the Filipinos were commonly referred to, were
chosen over other Asian nationals for their English proficiency
and inherent patience and ability to adapt to the local culture.
Thus, setting foot in PNG on May 10, 1974 a hundred and thirty-six
Filipinos made up the first batch of technicians, teachers,
professors, architects, surveyors, fishery experts and
agriculturists. These recruits were either posted in various
government units along with their white counterparts or taught
elementary and vocational courses across the country.
One of these recruits was Orlando (Orly ) Alvarez, then 29, hired
as a mechanic although he had a degree in Mechanical Engineering.
"We were recruited by the Australian colonial government. The
offer was good at the time compared to what we were making in the
Philippines. The kina (local currency) was a bit higher than the
US dollar, so conversion into peso was good. When we came to Papua
New Guinea, we were put on a chartered Qantas flight," recalled
Alvarez, now 61.
For his first job, he was assigned to the Plant and Transport
Department, handling the transport needs of government agencies.
He said his main job was to keep the vehicles "running at all
times".
"I trained a lot of local guys on automotive works. In later
years, they became managers in various units of the present-day
Works Department," Alvarez proudly reminisced. He is now the
Transport director at the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary (RPNGC).
Towards the closing years of the colonial government, the centre
of economic activities remained in Lae, an industrial hub in the
northern coast of the country, and in Port Moresby, the southern
capital where the international airport is located alongside a
port frequented by international ships.
Filipino technicians, such as mechanics, welders, carpenters,
drivers, machinists, agriculturists along with doctors and other
professionals were mainly based either in Lae or in Port Moresby.
Even after PNG gained independence from Australia on September 15,
1975, the exodus of Filipinos continued through direct hiring,
this time by the Papua New Guinea government and the private
companies and businesses.
Education a priority goal
In 1979, the PNG government focused their recruitment goal on
education. They hired Filipino high school and elementary school
teachers and vocational instructors, along with technicians and
office secretaries. The teachers were distributed to schools in
the provinces.
Pete Cortez, then 27 and an electrical engineer, was among this
batch. He was assigned as lecturer at the Port Moresby Technical
College along with several Australian instructors.
"The students I handled that time were attentive and very much
interested in learning the skill ... they strived hard to learn
... a number of them came to the class barefooted, maybe because
that was their culture," said Cortez, now the Superintendent of
Curriculum at the Technical Vocational Education and Training
Division of the Department of Education.
Cortez had observed that the current crop of students is rude to
their teachers unlike during the early days. At present, his area
of concern is to intensify and supervise the technical and
vocational training in the country.
When Patrick Levo, then a young journalist I met in 1993 learned
that I came from the Philippines, he immediately reminisced about
his Filipino teacher-Mrs Saturnina Cortez. She was his teacher in
second year high school (1980) at Iarowari on the Sogere Plateau
outside of Port Moresby.
"She was such a bubbly, lovable grand Filipino woman." Levo said
of his teacher in an email sent to me from Lihir Island north-east
of Papua New Guinea where his employer, the Lihir Gold Ltd, one of
the world's biggest gold producers, operates.
"To this day, I still consider her a very special woman, not only
for teaching us in the academic sense but for her motherly advise.
She even taught us how to sew the holes on our shirts, how best to
wash our clothes using a bar of soap ... how to use the toothpaste
... and more on personal health and hygiene," says Levo, who works
as Lihir Gold's Community Information Officer.
Levo said that Mrs Cortez and her husband Pedro, a vocational
instructor, can be proud of their contributions to the education
of the people of this country.
"Show me one professional Aussie and I will match him with a
Filipino."
Alvarez recalled that there was a time when the first Filipino
recruits that included him were paid salaries lower than those of
their Australian counterparts. Realising the inequality, the
Filipinos supported the petition on their behalf by the Philippine
Consul General to Papua New Guinea Samson Saballones to bring the
anomaly to the government's attention.
In his petition, the Consul General asked for equal treatment of
Filipino workers on the issue of salary parity. Dramatising his
appeal-demand, Mr Saballones challenged the government with the
statement: "Show me one professional Aussie and I will match him
with a Filipino."
Filipino workers won their day in court.
Alvarez noted that the Filipinos unselfishly imparted to the
locals all they knew about their trade to facilitate skill
transfer, the main goal why expatriate professionals were
recruited.
"That's why those who trained under me who later became successful
in their careers would call me up to say thank you," he said.
Alvarez, however, noted one attitude among the locals that often
got the better of them.
"After they learned what had to be learned, they thought they
could now take over the job like they were the master ...
forgetting that we technicians honed [our skills] over the years
which no one could learn in a few sessions at the workshop."
"I agree," says Nene Sta. Cruz, a master trainer at the Integrated
Development Services, Ltd. Her outfit provides services, i.e.,
training, professional consultancy, applied research and
organisational competence to government institutions and private
companies.
She recalled that a number of small business partnerships between
Filipinos and Papua New Guineans did not prosper because of the
latter's perception on how business should be handled.
Sta. Cruz, arrived in 1984 as a lecturer at a government agency
equivalent to the Development Academy of the Philippines (DAP),
the Papua New Guinea Institute of Public Administration. Later,
she was hired as a trainer in a programme for future government
training officers, into which she injected Filipino work ethics.
Back in the Philippines, she was with the Philippine Business for
Social Progress (BPSP) as project supervisor and pioneered the
self-employment programme of the Department of Social Welfare (DSW).
"When I was with the Papua New Guinea IPA, I expanded the concept
of training by identifying who among those in public service
needed training skills," Sta. Cruz said, noting that this
developed into a course for extension officers who went to the
villages to work with the grassroots.
The training they received helped them in their profession in
later years, she said. "A number of my officer-students are now in
government agencies holding top positions. Some even became
members of Parliament, a governor and a government cabinet
member."
Additionally, to improve the efficiency of executive secretaries
working for top-level government officials, Sta. Cruz designed a
special programme for them after which they were sent to Manila
for hands-on assignment in top corporate entities in the business
enclave of Makati.
Sta. Cruz noted that these office secretaries employed by
government ministers, directors and top management were among
those usually ignored when it concerned proficiency training.
"Now, government executives are benefiting from the newly-acquired
skills of their executive secretaries," she said.
The Filipinos' inherent flexibility as workers is one factor that
continues to make them attractive to Papua New Guinean employers.
John Orea, a road contractor and businessman, and former governor
of Central province, relied heavily on Filipino experts for
business and technical advice.
"I learned a lot from my Filipino consultants, especially in the
engineering aspect of my projects," he said, adding that he highly
valued the expertise and friendships of the Filipinos. "I talked
to them as much as I could to learn new things from them."
In fact, when he became the Central province governor in the late
1990s, the first thing he did was to pirate one Filipino civil
engineer from the Works Department to become his consultant for
his rural development programme. The consultant was Raul Sta.
Cruz, the late husband of Nene Sta. Cruz.
Pinoys thriving in Papua New Guinea
Last year, the Filipinos in PNG number 7,500, according to
estimates by the Philippine Embassy early last year, with about
3,500 based in Port Moresby. The rest are distributed across the
country, working in trade stores, banks, corporate offices,
factories, logging camps and government units.
Long-time expatriates take pride in saying that with their
employment here, they were able to send their children to local
international schools and Australian universities.
Says Remy Socan, a manager at Port Moresby Guest House: We like it
very much here ... we were able to send our children to the
international school and we're enjoying our lives here ...
whenever we went home to the Philippines for a holiday, I had
always thought of coming back soon ... life is very much different
in the Philippines."
Remy and her husband Tony, a manager at a government technical
school in Port Moresby, first came to PNG in mid-70s but were
based for a long time in Lae before finally moving to the capital.
 
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