Mt Bosavi needs safer crossing

Letters

SOUTHERN Highlands’ Mt Bosavi is a protected World Wildlife Fund (WWF) sanctuary rich in flora and fauna.
Many have carried out researches in the area and documented some new species.
The area is along the borders of Gulf, Western and Hela.
It is isolated and the only means of access is by air.
Otherwise, it’s a three-day walk from Lake Kutubu to Mt Bosavi.
One of the challenges for the people travelling by foot is crossing of the Tagali River, in addition to the mud and blood-sucking leeches along the way.
Mt Bosavi LLG has nine airstrips which were built by the people and are currently in use by the Missionary Aviation Fellowship (MAF) and Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL).
The locals also built a cane bridge around the Hegigo Sisibia section of the Tagali River, but it got swept away by a flood, making crossing more difficult and dangerous.
The multi-national corporation, then Oil Search Ltd, now Santos, has been operating in the area for decades.
It has done little to assist the people of Mt Bosavi in terms of improving accessibility to the outside world.
It has not built a single footbridge or any useful infrastructure as part of its community incentive programme.
Oil Search Ltd had its pipeline in the area which carries oil to the Gulf of Papua.
This pipeline crosses the Tagali River at two different locations.
The height of the pipeline from the river below is about 120m (rough estimate).
It will take a dare devil to walk along the pipe from the Kutubu side to the Mt Bosavi side over the Tagali River.
It was at the second pipeline crossing (height is estimated to be around 50m) that a mother and her baby crossed when the bilum slipped from the mother’s head and fell to the bottom with the baby in it. The mother could not do anything and continued her journey to the other side deeply traumatised.
This happened in 2000 or 2002, Mt Bosavi local Salles Timon could not remember the exact year as he recalled the hardships the locals face.
Timon is a third-year diploma in primary teaching student at the Dauli Teachers’ College in Hela.
He comes from Mt Bosavi LLG and started elementary education through to secondary in Inu village in the Lake Kutubu area where he spent most of his childhood.
Timon is of mixed parentage – Southern Highlands and Hela.
It is Timon’s hope that Hela and Southern Highlands governments and Santos will build a safer crossing over Tagali or better still a road for the people of Mt Bosavi LLG.
Until then, he and his people still face the challenges and dangers of trekking and walking the pipeline.
Timon wants to go home (Mt Bosavi LLG) to teach and educate the young generation about PNG and the outside world.
He has no choice but to continue the same journey to and from home, this time, as a public servant (teacher).
If nothing happens soon, Timon’s children, and maybe his grandchildren as well, will still cross the Tigali on foot.
The valuable black liquid has stopped flowing in the pipes.
Oil Search Ltd has gone; the dried wells and empty pipes are evidence of its short life in the beautiful Hela and Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea.
What next?
This will be the question on Timon’s mind as long as he lives.

Martin Mintai Waure
DTC, Hela