PNG should help itself first

 PAPUA New Guinea has far more pressing issues to worry about than trying to solve Australia’s  asylum -seeker crisis which it is well eqipped to handle on its own.

PNG’s own problem in this area is immense.

In Australia, the asylum seekers are stopped by an effective land, sea and air surveillance system. 

In PNG they enter at will and most often through the front door. The country lacks the capacity and the resources to stop them, much less monitor their activities, pick them up and send them away.

The population of illegal immigrants to PNG is growing by all counts. That can be seen on the street corners of every town and city.

Most worrisome is that PNG departments and agencies charged with monitoring and controlling foreigner movement  are not operating at any level of efficiency to make a difference.

The key agencies and departments that greet the foreigner, both corporate and individual and escort them into PNG are the PNG Immigration and Citizenship Services; the Work Permit division of Labour and Industrial Relations, Customs Services and the Investment Promotion Authority. 

The National Intelligence Organisation, the Police Force, the PNG Defence Force and the Internal Revenue Commission also perform important roles in this area. These gatekeeper departments and agencies are today operating as in almost total isolation of each other when they should be cooperating well as a unit. 

Information should be exchanged and actions planned together. Each organisation admitted to a parliamentary inquiry not too long ago that there was rampant corruption within the organisations. 

Each operates out of separate offices. In this pathetic situation human smuggling, prostitution rings, money-laundering and document fraud are rife and spreading.

Lack of resources, particularly funds and staffing are fairly universal issues for these departments and agencies. Customs and Immigration, for instance, are under-represented at all points of entry into the country. The NIO in particular has staff and funding requirements which need urgent attention. 

The all-important immigration  services lacks an institutional memory. meaning that it has very unreliable records of how many visas, which classes and who they have been issued to. 

Many have issues to do with updating and upgrading their computer systems, the laws and policies that govern them and new equipment and training. 

Institutions such as the  Labour Department have worked hard since 2006 to  build capacity. The NIO is another state agency that seems to have a handle on the illegal movement of people and corporations but both are being dragged down in their efforts by the lack of resources and by the other agencies with complementary tasks not being able to perform their duties and responsibilities properly.

The Work Permit section of Labour and Industrial Relations would grant a work permit to a foreigner after due diligence. That must occur before that person can be granted a visa by Immigration. The Work Permit section has improved tremendously and appears to be running smoothly but its efforts are undermined by the Immigration service that fails to keep a reliable record of foreigners and there are poor linkages and networking between the two divisions. 

This matter of poor communication beggars description. How can foreign businesses and individuals be effectively monitored, helped, and told to toe the line when each link in the Government chain, so to speak, is broken. Foreigners are not coming in the back door. They are coming in the front door using PNG’s own slack system.