Charlie’s golden opportunitys

Story and pictures by JAMES KILA
IF you ever find yourself visiting the RamuNiCoWarehouse Departmentat BasamukRefinery on the Rai Coast of Madang, you’ll most likely bump into a man called Charlie Jowia.
We might say Jowia is lucky to have found a job there. He never anticipated working for such a large extractive company after dropping out of school at grade 10. For him to have won the trust of his superiors says much about the man who has such a drive and commitment towards workthat he looks back and describes his good fortune as ‘golden.’
He lived at Finsch Road at Newtown in Madang after leaving school. He had a friend who worked at the Department of Primary Industry (DPI) and from time to time went there to help out with some welding jobs and soon mastered it.
When calls weremade by rural farmers to help build cocoa fermenteries in rural districts such asBogia, Rai Coast, Karkar and Ramu, he was always one of the first to sign up.
Jowia made many friends in those outback places where he worked as a welder and builder, charging low rates for services.
His biggest breakthrough came in 2008 when he was suddenly recruited to work with JT Construction, a contractor engaged in the Ramu Nickel Project construction at Basamuk Refinery in RaiCoast and three years later found himselfhand-picked by former chairman of Basamuk landowner association Lima Mullung to be a helping hand with RamuNiCo. The rest is now history.
Today, he is responsible for seven warehouses at RamuNiCo’sBasamuk Refinery and, as the boss, has charge of the keys to these facilities.
As a supervisor, he is also responsible for local workers handling cargo at the Basamuk port.
Recently, Jowia was among a group of 150 RamuNiCo employees at the refinery who underwent various skills training including training on different types of cranes, gas testing instrument user training, basic explosive training and scaffold training.
“In the midst of commodity prices crisis, RamuNiCo truly thinks of its workers and not a single worker has been removed from his/her job but it continues to support them and even goes beyond to provide these kinds of training to get its workers equipped with skills”, Jowia said.
RamuNiCo (MCC) engaged a 100% nationally-owned training company called Multi Skills Training Institute based in Lae to provide the up-skilling of its staff, 90 percent of whom were nationals.
RamuNiCo’s Operations Vice PresidentXuJian says theworkforce is the core of operations.
“To achieve its production design target, the company needs a competent and skilful workforce to carry out work in line with the industry standard whilst promoting the safety of each and every individual worker which is of paramount,”Xu added. James Kila is PR officer at Ramu Nico.