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| Tomofa, time to do your homework | |
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WILLIAM Tomofa (The National, Feb 1)
appears to suffer from the same impediment as his idol, Moses Maladina –
an inability or unwillingness to do his homework. Certainly his flirtation with money matters, with which I will deal with in detail later, can be disregarded as nonsense. In reply to his “cheap shot” about my plantation, there are no plantation labourers per se in the Milne Bay islands, and every plantation is run down because people, no smarter than his idol, set wage rates that the industry could not sustain, and entrusted people – no smarter than themselves – with the management of the Copra Marketing Board. Ganawe was, in fact, the last Milne Bay island plantation to be worked with wage-paid labour. I know nothing of the roads on Ferguson Island but I do wonder how Maladina’s boats are going to service the needs of the 4,000 people in the Halubwa Basin – even canoes have to be portaged part of the way up the Salamo River. On Normanby Island, all roads were funded by the government, including the Miadeba-Salibolia road on which the plant and personnel of sawmillers Stewardson Brothers were used under contract. The government had upgraded the Esa’ala-Ganawe road before the 1997 elections and used it to link with dinghies from Sehulea, to both cut costs and provide an administration presence in an area where there has been none since the road became impassable. It would be interesting to see a breakdown of Tomofa’s K6.664 million costing for the restoration of the 15km Salamo-Galubwa road. We know the government’s mishandling of the InterOil agreement means that the developers of PNG’s petroleum resources and businessmen have no price advantage over imported refined petroleum products. Furthermore, the government’s 50% minimum wage increase had had as disastrous an effect on domestic development costs as it has had on our international competitiveness. But even so, K444,000 to restore a kilometre of road that, until only two years ago, had PIR’s agricultural tractor driving over it regularly to service the 4,000 people in the Halubwa Basin does seem to be “just a little bit” high. As even Tomofa’s idol should have known, money spent on the road would not affect the provision of services to the 42,000 people in the district, which are covered by the Budget allocation to the province. The cost of any road comes under the member’s slush funds – especially the district road improvement programme, which to date, Maladina has squandered on at least one boat, possibly two. It is a little difficult to work out who paid for the second boat, but both were placed in the care of Kula Mei Enterprises. One boat now lies partly submerged at Salamo and the assistant district administrator recently would not allow the other to sail because he deemed it to be unsafe. Certainly neither is currently providing transportation for the district’s people. Perhaps new boats would have been better. Graham Wood Esa’ala |
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