Agriculture can solve unemployment issue: Official

THE agricultural sector is the answer to solve Papua New Guinea’s unemployment issue, therefore job creation mechanisms must be developed in the sector, an officer says.
Coffee Industry working group chairman Ian Mopafi said every year thousands of grade 12 students entered the job market.
“I am proposing that of school leavers coming out from our high schools should be paid to grow coffee,” Mopafi said at a national coffee symposium in Port Moresby recently.
“We should pay them K1 for every coffee tree they plant – about 2,600 coffee trees per hectare – if you pay K2,600 to a farmer, he will plant coffee and the return over the years will be multiplied, not only from the farmer but also for the country.
“Every year we have thousands of grade 12 school leavers.
“We need to get the younger generation growing coffee.”
Mopafi called for more work to be done on research and extension services to improve and address coffee quality and production.
“We would like to see relevant research and extension services in the industry so that we can hit the two million bag mark,” he said
“Some of the reasons why coffee production is in decline is because there are other competing agriculture activities.”
Mopafi said the Coffee Industry Corporation had set a target in the last 1990s for meeting the two million bags mark, but the industry had yet to reach that mark.