Expat managers suppressing locals

PROFESSIONALS are hired by various companies for a reason.
Each person is employed to carry out duties as stipulated by their specialty to ensure the company reaches the anticipated economic benefit without any detrimental issues.
The employees are providing the essential advises and services to the operations of the organisation. Professionals collect data, analyse, evaluate, interpret and provide recommendations, design and advice on all matters of the operation.
Many of the organisations in the country are run by expatriate managers and chief executives.
Some of these managers do not trust PNG professionals.
Therefore, they employ their expatriate mates.
Some expatriate managers and consultants think, assume and behave as if PNG professionals are data collectors.
This is discrimination and is not practicable in the modern world today. The government should take tougher measures to prevent these expatriates from entering the country.
These managers tend to threaten their employees.
There are numerous cases of threatening, bulling, harassment and intimidation in most organisations.
A leader should be more tactful and thoughtful when talking to employees on sensitive issue.
It is very easy to take people to court for this kind of behaviour in other countries but not in PNG.
The government should stop this; if there are expats involved, they should be prevented from working in this country.
One way to evaluate the effectiveness of leadership is to look at the abilities of employees to build teams and get result through others. If a leader cannot do this, the style of leadership is destructive, or may have something to do with managerial incompetence.
The ability to motivate others is a fundamental leadership skill.
Leaders empower their employees to enhance and broaden their capabilities while increasing their authority and accountability in decision making.
Some companies have been in business for over 25 years in this country and many nationals have taken over expatriate positions.
However, these jobs have been reverted to expatriates especially in the mining and petroleum industries. Some expatriate employees and consultants have been using national professional as data collectors and have not provided any advance training.
There are many dead-wood still around, taking up PNG jobs which needs to be investigated seriously.
I am of the notion that an expert expat employee shall train one of his/her employee (subordinate) to replace him/her within his/her contract term (which is generally three years).
If that expert expat fails to do so within the contract period, then he/she fails, therefore the expat’s contract shall not be renewed.
In a case where nobody is ready yet (proven beyond doubt) even with succession plan in place and there is training/understudying, another three years can be given.

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