Land is no cheap commodity

Editorial, Normal
Source:

The National, Friday, June 10th 2011

THE vicious circle of ethnic violence again reared its ugly head in Lae last week with several permanent houses and roadside trade stores razed along the Busu Road.
It erupted between Morobe youths and highlanders at the Mambu market settlement, past Malahang along the Busu Road, following the murder of a young man from Kabwum.
Morobe youths ransacked and looted houses and trade stores belonging to Western Highlanders before setting them on fire.
More than 70 houses, a church, PMV buses, trade stores and tyre repair shops were burned to ashes last Thursday and continued last Friday.
The incident left almost 1,200 families and relatives scattered and roaming around Lae city in search of proper shelters while those who have relatives became a burden for these relatives.
This week, thousands of Lae residents who rely on the public transport system were held to ransom as Western Highlands PMV operators pulled their vehicles off the road in support of their wantoks.
It highlights, yet again, the enormous social problems in Lae brought about by rural-urban migration as well as local villagers selling their land off cheaply to outsiders.
The problem started after World War II, which devastated Lae.
Only a few buildings were intact at its end, including the Ampo Lutheran church and the Guinea Airways hangar.
It also ravaged the local villages and made refugees of the people, who were forced to lead a miserable nomadic existence for four years in order to keep away from the savage bombing and shooting which tore up their homeland as the fighting see-sawed between the Japanese and the Allied forces.
Post-war Lae developed facilities that the old town had lacked – churches, shops, cinemas, bus and taxi services, a hospital and a school for European children – and became a garden city of scenic shaded avenues and neat bungalows.
Port Moresby, hemmed in by arid hills and roads leading nowhere, was the worst possible site for a capital.
But the Australian government had poured in millions into the place that a change to the obvious location of Lae – with its road links to Madang and the highlands – was out of the question.
Lae’s main attractions were its spacious parks and reserves, the most notable of which were the Botanical Gardens and the War Cemetery; a visit to these became a feature of the itinerary of tourist excursions to New Guinea.
With the growth of the town, inevitably, came wave after wave of immigrants from rural areas – in search of the bright lights.
As more migrants arrived, Lae experienced many of the growth pains felt by other developing nations: the growth of squalid, unplanned migrant settlements; problems with unskilled and unemployed urban drifters; a rise in petty crime; failure to keep up the supply of essential services such as roads, water, sewerage, power and transport; housing and land shortages; and great pressure on health and education services.
In the period just before independence, numerous prophets of doom warned of impending disaster in Lae, given the dislocation and transitional period Papua New Guinea would go through.
The city is now going through that impending disaster which these harbingers foretold all those years ago.
Ahi villagers in Lae have been told in no uncertain terms – so many times – not to sell any more of their land if they want to survive.
The message was drummed across to the villagers during a National Land Development Programme (NLDP) awareness seminar at the Lae International Hotel last December.
The six Ahi villages consist of Yalu, Kamkumung, Hengali, Butibam, Yanga and Wagang.
The Ahi villages, traditional landowners of the land on which Lae now stands, have lost most of their land for the development of the city as well as to urban settlements.
Villagers also gave real-life examples of individuals selling off customary land without the knowledge of other landowners.
Urban customary landow-ners are most affected by changes in town and they must change now for their own good.
The government has given a golden opportunity to the Ahi people and they must not let go.
If they let go, selling their land off cheaply, problems like the current dispute involving Morobeans and Western Highlanders in Lae will continue to haunt us now and into the future.

The current land reforms are designed for the benefit of landowners, with the government giving an opportunity to stop the sale of their land.
One of the reasons for creating integrated land groups (ILGs) was to help landowners in Lae.
ILGs involve many people, not just one man.
The government has given a golden opportunity to the Ahi people and they must not let it go.
If they let go, selling their land off cheaply, problems like the current dispute involving Morobeans and Western Highlanders in Lae will continue to haunt us now and into the future.