| Business |
Welcome the RH Foundation
OURS is a cynical age. Donations made
towards important national causes by multi-nationals and other
large business organisations are often viewed with less than the
enthusiasm they deserve.
There’s a prevailing attitude that such donations are only a form
of recompense for the large profits that such organisations take
out from the developing countries in which they invest.
Some of these critics frequently go further – these often
substantial grants are viewed as guilt money supposedly pumped
into a country to disguise criminal acts or social evils
perpetrated by the companies concerned.
On occasion that viewpoint may be true. But in the vast majority
of cases, it is not.
It’s a sad distortion of the truth and an incisive comment on the
warped thinking of those who indulge in such negative mental
posturing.
The truth is that much of this slick cynicism ignores the reality.
Those who head these giant businesses often have a genuine wish to
be involved in addressing urgent issues in the countries in which
they operate.
The Rimbunan Hijau Foundation is a case in point.
Last week, coinciding with the visit of the chairman of that
organisation to our country, came the announcement that the RH
Foundation will contribute K600,000 to the national fight against
HIV/AIDS.
Chairman Tan Sri Tiong Hiew King detailed the grant of this sum
over a three-year period while opening a new facility in Lae for
Pacific Star Ltd, the publisher of The National.
This sum is a sizeable contribution from one of PNG’s most
significant investors.
It will help strengthen our National Government’s growing
initiatives and burgeoning funding to fight the disease. It will
stand beside the Clinton Foundation support and the huge on-going
funding from the Australian government.
And most importantly, it will help re-ignite PNG’s battle against
HIV/AIDS that periodically flags and loses its sense of direction.
Many other major investors in our country have been tardy over
this issue. A sort of desperate complacency has taken root in PNG,
an ostrich-like head-burying that refuses to acknowledge the
frightening growth of the incidence of this disease.
Money solves nothing. But lack of money ensures that problems are
not solved.
If the more extreme of the predictions relating to the spread of
HIV/AIDS in this country prove to be accurate in the future, then
we can have no room for complacency today.
On the contrary, this is the moment where we should reach out to
each and every form of assistance we can. For while we must ready
ourselves for potential disaster, we should also be straining
every nerve today to significantly alter that fate.
As far as our own people are concerned, it’s time we stop adopting
the borrowed attitudes of others, who often have hidden agendas
that fuel their actions and their words. Most of the savage
attacks that have been hurled at RH during the multi-faceted
company’s long and beneficial involvement in this country do not
originate from among our own people.
They come mainly from embittered foreigners in search of a cause.
Many of these people are searching for an issue, any issue that
might relieve the terminal monotony of their aimless lives.
They neither sow nor reap. They do not deal in the constructive.
Actions intended to sustain and reinforce society lie outside
their blinkered vision.
That is the background against which this generous on-going
funding from the RH Foundation can and should be viewed.
Its time that our people formed their own opinions about the
relative worth of major investors in PNG.
We have the ability to distinguish between those investors clearly
committed to the long haul, and those fly-by-night operators who
make a quick profit, then flee the country.
When launching the new Lae development, Mr Tiong said that the RH
Foundation would concentrate on the areas of health, education and
sport. All three sectors can and no doubt will benefit from the
involvement of the RH Foundation.
PNG has gained significantly from the charitable interest and
involvement of a small number of multi-national enterprises. These
companies have proven to be that rarity, good corporate citizens.
The National is proud to be part of just such a positive and
significant enterprise.
 
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