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Opposition leader Sir Mekere Morauta has
criticised the Government’s policy programme for the next five years as
one that lacks depth because of its scanty treatment of issues.
Sir Mekere said the Prime Minister’s statement made two weeks ago had
set no clear direction or priorities, detailed policies or measures.
He made the remarks yesterday in a speech in reply to the Prime
Minister’s State of the Nation’s address.
Sir Mekere referred to the Prime Minister”s comments on the fisheries
sector where he would make Papua New Guinea the “capital of tuna” and
ensure the resource is “harvested on a sustainable level”.
Sir Mekere said Sir Michael did not say how he would achieve this.
“The last Government mismanaged fisheries. It broke licensing and
fisheries management laws. It gave, some might say sold, licences to
many spurious operators. It bypassed the approved regime for distant
water access. It ignored domestic operators and on-shore processing.
“Remember the Chinese stern trawlers illegally given domestic licences?
Remember the Taiwanese company claiming to build a large plant in East
New Britain, but selling PNG fishing licences on the internet and luring
gullible people to invest in a fast-money scheme backed by the
‘millions’ to be made in Papua New Guinea?” Sir Mekere said.
“We have been made a laughing stock. Outsiders must think we have no
sense of what is good for us, that we are easy to manipulate or
corrupt,” Sir Mekere said.
He added that the tuna resource was now over-fished. Last year, the
reported purse-seiner catch was 450,000 metric tones, 30% more than
allowed for in the tuna management plan.
Sir Mekere said he supported the tuna capital concept but would approach
it differently by auditing all existing fisheries agreements and
licences to ensure compliance with the law.
He added that tuna must be processed on-shore and that all tuna caught
in PNG waters and tie purse-seiner licences to legitimate domestic
processing plants.
He said this would create at least 20,000 direct jobs, mostly for women.
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