On a mission to help resource owners

By LUKE KAMA
DEPUTY chairman of Hides PDL (Petroleum Development Licence) 7 Special Purpose Authority, Eric Haroli has graduated with a master’s degree in business administration (MBA) from the University of Papua New Guinea on April 20.
Haroli who was an accounting graduate from UPNG in 2007 and a senior auditor with the Auditor General’s Office before resigning to take up his studies last year, attributed his achievement to the encouragement of his former lecturer at UPNG and Finance Secretary Dr Ken Ngangan.
“When I graduated with an accounting degree from UPNG in 2007, Dr Ken Ngangan was my accounting lecturer at that time and he told me, you need to further your studies into master’s degree,” Haroli recalled.
“So after graduating with an accounting degree, I took a job with Auditor General’s Office as an auditor and worked up to becoming a senior auditor.
“But every time I bumped into Dr Ngangan, he would greet me and ask, ‘bro did you undertake postgraduate studies already?’
“And that question in itself was a challenge as well as a motivation which prompted me to resign last year as a senior auditor and undertake a fulltime study at UPNG in MBA,” Haroli told The National.
He said his next aim now was to undertake Master’s in Corporate Governance in the United Kingdom and he is looking forward to enrolling at one of the universities there in 2021.
“Why I plan to undertake my second masters degree is because of the fact that we have a lot of corrupt organisations and entities mushrooming in the country.
“We need good corporate governance strategies in our governance system and I am planning to undertake this study to come back and help our country and our people in areas of corporate governance because most companies and business around the world succeed or fails because of their corporate governance strategies,” Haroli said.
When asked about his immediate plans, he said apart from employment which he was yet to secure, he was the deputy chairman of Hides PDL 7 Special Purpose Authority and was looking forward to provide strategic leadership on the board to ensure the authority performed well to deliver on the needs and aspirations of the 227 clans under PDL7.
“Another thing is that we as landowners may have the resources, the oil and gas, but if we do not have the brains, other people will use our resources for their benefit at the expense of us the resource owners.
“That’s why, my ambition is also to help fight for the rights of my people to realise the benefits of what they own from their land.”
He thanked Hela Governor Philip Undialu who was his classmate from high school to national high and university for his support, Dr Ken Ngangan for his noble encouragement and Hela administrator William Bando, chairman of Hides Gas Development Company Tuguyawini Parindali and especially his wife and six children for their support during his studies.