Govt must practice what they preach regarding landowners

Letters

I WRITE in light of the PNG Petroleum and Energy Summit which was held last week in Port Moresby.
A lot of important issues in the Petroleum and Energy Sector in PNG were highlighted by the sector’s key experts and players.
One of the key highlights and important issue of the summit was the landowner issues which relates to landowner identification, benefit sharing agreements and the benefits of getting them to participate as integral partners to a project.
However, I am dissatisfied as a member of the public to know what the government and bureaucrats were saying was intended to only inform the summit as in reality things are all too different and there is big room for them to play what they preach out there.
Among a number of failed engagement of landowner issues in PNG, the Kutubu and Gobe Oil Projects in the Southern Highlands Province (SHP) remain testament of a government that is reluctant about the proper and active engagement of project landowners.
In 1996, a group of key landowner leaders of Kutubu Oil Project conceived a robust benefit sharing model whereby Petro Kina, a landowner nominee (as opposed to a state nominee) was to be endorsed to manage all landowner benefits and ensure that business continuity and growth were achieved.
However, the government at the time was not supportive and successive governments did so thus the idea of maximising landowner benefits, increasing local participation and valuing the effort, time and money of project landowners were all thrown into the drain.
Now if the government and bureaucrats are concerned of increasing landowner participation and benefits as they all said during the Petroleum and Energy Summit 2017, then it is appropriate that they account for time value of money at the time the group of Kutubu landowner leaders conceived Petro Kina and ensure the same mistakes are not repeated in the future.
On the hand, landowner identification or the process of filtering landowners on certain benchmarks such as legitimacy and fairness continue to be too cumbersome for the government.
The cumbersome government machinery have created threats to petroleum and energy projects in the country as disgruntled landowners for lack of proper recognition tend to get in the way of the project’s efficient operations thus further putting to risk the entire project chain.
In Gobe Oil Project, the so-called “paper landowners” have flourished and enriched themselves to the detrimental effects caused on the bona fide, legitimate landowners who are mostly poor, illiterate and lack sufficient self support to negotiate effectively with the developers and the state.
There are many instances of producing a fake Incorporated Land Group (ILG) but the two (2) most common are as follows;
First a stock clan consisting of 50 sub clans endorses one of the sub clans to negotiate on behalf of the stock clan in the Land Titles Commission (LTC) carried out by the National Supreme Court and in the process, the nominee hijacks the process by creating a new ILG and uses the endorsement of the stock clan as well as their disadvantages to camouflage the illegality and make it legitimate and banks on the benefits.
Second, a group of people who are “paper landowners” registers a fake ILG using their affluent social status, the disadvantages of the legitimate landowners and the various loopholes in the government machinery and pursues the rightful benefits and participation of the latter without detection and if all are real.
Now provided, the LTC as well as the Absolute Dispute Resolution (ADR) and the backing for landowner issues that was echoed in the Petroleum and Energy Summit 2017, I fervently hope that the interests of the rightful landowners in the various petroleum and energy projects in PNG will be safeguarded and promoted in a more sustainable way.

Mike H, Via email