Time to live together as one

The warning issued by Chief Secretary Isaac Lupari about the danger posed by an emerging trend of ethnic groupings in the civil service, and in societies in general, makes sense.
We should by now, 43 years of existing as an independent nation, be a lot more integrated as a people. We should by now have moved away from living in inclusive rather than exclusive communities.
In fact, Papua New Guineas should now be living to the fullest the beautifully-coined phrase liberally used by many of “one people, one nation”. We choose to our detriment to live and think inside our own separate worlds as 850 tribes, speaking our own dialects, promoting our own cultures.
What we should be promoting is peaceful co-existence and tribal integration which are needed to complement national development programmes and progress.
We just have to move away from existing in groups such as Engans, Sepiks or Morobeans, which we see much of in peri-urban squatter settlements.
We claim to be people of one nation yet live in our own little hamlets.
Lupari warns this trend is now leading to a widening crevice in the civil service. It is indeed dangerous and which will turn volatile if allowed to fester.
As an example, Lupari says 99.9 per cent of teachers in Enga are Engans. Thus the children are brought up to think and act like Engans. When they proceed to tertiary institutions, they continue to think and do things the Engan way. They move and live together as Engans. It is why we often see fights among students demarcated in provincial groups.
This mentality has to end.
On the civil service, a teacher originally from Morobe should be posted to work in Western. A doctor hailing from New Ireland should be posted to carry out his profession in Hela without having to worry about being treated as an outsider. A provincial administrator from Chimbu should serve in Milne Bay without any fear of being ostracised.
Lupari highlighted the danger of allowing civil servants especially teachers, to serve in their own provinces. They can become too comfortable knowing that they are living among wantok and lose focus of what they are being paid to do. Eventually, they will imagine themselves as somehow being set in authority over those they are supposed to serve and decide when they will and will not turn up to work.
This is not to say that all civil servants serving in their own districts or local level governments fall into this trap. There are those who take their jobs and careers seriously and will walk the extra mile to see that their own people are properly served.
Lupari’s warning is a call for a change in the way we think, the way we view fellow citizens from other districts and provinces, the way we relate to each other as Papua New Guineans.
We must promote oneness rather than segregation, peaceful co-existence rather than division. Tribal segregation should no longer have a place in our plans. It is counter-productive and a recipe for disaster.
And as Lupari also says, it is scary.