By ELIZABETH VUVU
DOWNSTREAM processing is the answer to the many problems faced in Papua New Guinea today, Governor-General Sir Paulias Matane said.
Officiating at the occasion of the 20th anniversary of OISCA Rabaul Eco-Tech Training Centre, Sir Paulias challenged the people to wake up and realise that downstream processing was good for the country.
He commended OISCA Rabaul for training the people on the concept of downstream processing.
Sir Paulias said most people go through all the hard work of extracting coconut to make copra which they sell at a cheap price to other countries, when they can actually utilise these produce in our own country.
“We are slaves in our own country and I don’t want to see raw materials go out of our country,” he said.
“If these raw materials were kept within the country and were gone through downstream processing right here, there would be a lot more jobs.”
He said about 90,000 of the young people that came out of school did not have jobs as they were trained to do jobs that did not exist in the country.
Because of this, he called for more vocational schools to be created around the country.
He said if more downstream processing was done, people would work hard and have less time committing law and order problems and the value of the kina currency would be strengthened.
“We have to change for the better of this country,” Sir Paulias said.