Take a reality check, Tammur
DURING the launch of The National’s Yearbook 2008 last week, Communication and Information Minister Patrick Tammur fleetingly referred to the “failed state” concept in his defence of the achievements of the Somare-led Government since 2002.
He was referring, of course, to the much-talked about mineral sector’s resurgence.
He inferred that the failed state concept was promoted by Australians.
Well guess what Mr Tammur, PNG is a failed state.
Its bureaucrats and political leaders cannot manage the internal affairs of this country and the very functioning of the institution of state.
It is not about mineral wealth but how the country is governed and its effects on the standard of living of people.
The minister should have a reality check by going into the emergency ward or general admissions area of the Port Moresby General Hospital.
He will see the long queues of people, some in need of urgent attendance, in a facility that is
not even humanly habitable.
Only a failed state will allow its citizens to die unnecessarily of preventable diseases and through neglect, in a state-funded hospital.
Only a failed state will have no answers to the lawlessness that is so rampant in the country, not least in Port Moresby, the very seat of government.
He could also visit the Ramu nickel project site to see the inundation of Chinese workers who are freely flouting labour laws, immigration laws and various other laws of the country.
A failed state cannot comprehensively enforce the laws that it created to safeguard the welfare of its citizens.
One does not need to be a politician, a high flying lawyer or a rocket scientist to see the internal disintegration that typifies the state of this country.
Recently, I sat up into the early morning hours watching the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) documentary on the needless death of young children in Port Moresby.
Some of these babies still lay unclaimed in the Port Moresby General Hospital morgue.
Some of the young victims died as a result of the HIV epidemic, more of them due to preventable diseases and poverty and yet politicians and senior bureaucrats boast about the minerals and increasing wealth of this country.

PK, Kavieng
Letters