We must start to think nationally

 NATIONAL Planning Minister Charles Abel made some pointed remarks at the launching of the Gazelle district’s five-year development plan and the opening of the Inland Baining local level government chamber at Vunapalading last Friday. 

Abel supported calls by local MP Malakai Tabar that the district’s, and province’s, population was growing at rate that needed to be addressed. 

Abel was candid in his assessment of population growth and said the people needed to take ownership of the issue as it would affect development. 

“Development is a process that starts with you and me, it starts with you and me even when we make decision in the bedroom as to how many children we will have,” Abel said. 

“Do we have the ability to look after six or seven children or did we take personal responsibility for our children? Why make six or seven children when parents cannot look after them?” 

His rhetoric may have been a little hard to swallow but it certainly had a point. 

Papua New Guineans may not realise it, or are too busy to take any notice, but this country’s population is rapidly growing and the signs can already be felt. 

These signs are no longer subtle. In terms of space, PNG’s land mass can easily cater for twice as many people as its current conservative estimate of seven million. 

The problem however is not living space but areas of the country that are developed with the basic services in transport (roads and bridges), communications and easily accessible services such as health, education and law and order.

When looked at from this perspective, the country is certainly headed into challenging times if it has not already. 

A look at urban areas in the country will tell you that the state and municipal authorities do not have the situation under control. 

One could surmise from the number of illegal squatter settlements springing up in every and any available patch of dirt within the city boundaries; the rise in crime (serious and petty), violent ethic clashes, traffic congestion, high unemployment, and the difficulty water, sewerage and electricity companies have in providing for city dwellers that – all is not well. 

Out in the provinces, the problems may be unique to their settings but they are no less important. 

The pressure on services will reach tipping point in the near future if efforts are not made to show people that what they do and the choices they make does have far reaching consequences. 

Gazelle, which has an es­­timated population of 130,000, needs better and larger heath centres, schools, more police personnel, more public servants and of course the infrastructure to go with it. 

Rabaul (38,000), Kokopo (74,000) and Pomio (47,000) face similar problems simply because development cannot keep up with population growth. 

This is a pattern no doubt being experienced in other parts of the country. 

This in turn will become an all too familiar pull factor to the already over-crowded urban centres. 

Being a largely rural-based society, PNG will have its hands full on an annual basis with the effects of a large and growing population. 

One of the obvious ways a population can be managed is through family planning. 

The concept and methods have been around for decades however the message of having the right number of children has not sunk through yet. In many parts of this country traditional practices encourage and even foster having many children but times are changing, and such out-dated ways of thinking need to be abandoned. 

It would be better to have fewer children and be able to give them a higher standard of nurturing then expose them to a life of suffering and neglect because the means to support the child is limited. 

Tabar quipped that the increasing expanding population indicated that people in his electorate were more interested in producing babies than the local cash crop cocoa, but that only shows that, as a people, we are content to think of our own needs and not of the community’s, district’s, province’s and nation’s. 

It is time to think nationally.