PNG MUST TAKE ITS NATIONAL SECURITY SERIOUSLY
OP/ED
NATIONAL security as a matter of debate has been “off the agenda’’ for many years and this may have led to an undesirable situation.
Back in the 1960s and 70s, frequent border “incidents’’ kept the Papua New Guinea public on the alert as to what was going on in the border with Indonesia and to a much lesser extent, with Australia.
The background was the oft reported aspirations of a former Indonesian President to subsume PNG as a part of the Indonesian “empire’’.
But succeeding Jakarta governments have been at pains to dismiss such regurgitated aspirations and have made extensive efforts to show their wish for peaceful co-existence.
Indeed a substantial part of our private sector now has an Indonesian component.
We are on friendly terms with the Indonesian military in terms of defence cooperation, in a way that could not have been imagined back in the 1970s.
Times have changed. The emphasis on border dealings is now much more focused on the unchecked movement of people and goods from one country to the other.
And it is alarming that the Customs vessel operated by our government to keep a watch on the marine border there is holed up at Madang, undergoing repairs.
It is time for our government to get serious about monitoring the movements between our two countries. It is a matter of national security, of economics, of possible threats to our animal and plant security and other issues.
With things like cocoa pod borer rattling our rural industries, we can ill afford to drop our guard when it comes to national security.
Our farmers in cocoa growing provinces are suffering badly as the introduced pest ravages their plantations. Bougainville has banked largely on restoring its pride of place as the nation’s number one cocoa growing domain. This and many other crops in the country could be endangered if we are not keeping track of people and boats that travel between the two countries and other neighbouring islands.
It’s something our Government has failed to tackle and considering prominent members of the Government are from West and East Sepik, it is a shame and a disgrace!
MEANWHILE talking about security lapses, the cry of a Southern Highlands paramount chief for a better deal for Papua New Guineans employed on LNG project contracts is a cause for concern.
The validity of his claims is yet to be verified but the mere fact of the stopwork on site and the tensions created by the claims must give the joint venture officials and our government officers cause for worry.
Billions of kina are being pumped into the national economy in the first year of the project.
But if we cannot strike a quick balance on basics like wage rates, we foresee a continuing thread of negative news to do with the LNG venture.
It is very early in the development stages. If there are “grey’’ areas like this emerging, we tend to think it is because of the rush to sign agreements and without pinning down all the details.
Perhaps the ministers who were rushing from Kokopo to Moresby to Cairns and Brisbane to get deals okayed can start shuffling to places like Tari and try to fill the gaps in agreements and ensure the theoretical documents will be made practical.
NATIONAL security as a matter of debate has been “off the agenda’’ for many years and this may have led to an undesirable situation.
Back in the 1960s and 70s, frequent border “incidents’’ kept the Papua New Guinea public on the alert as to what was going on in the border with Indonesia and to a much lesser extent, with Australia.
The background was the oft reported aspirations of a former Indonesian President to subsume PNG as a part of the Indonesian “empire’’.
But succeeding Jakarta governments have been at pains to dismiss such regurgitated aspirations and have made extensive efforts to show their wish for peaceful co-existence.
Indeed a substantial part of our private sector now has an Indonesian component.
We are on friendly terms with the Indonesian military in terms of defence cooperation, in a way that could not have been imagined back in the 1970s.
Times have changed. The emphasis on border dealings is now much more focused on the unchecked movement of people and goods from one country to the other.
And it is alarming that the Customs vessel operated by our government to keep a watch on the marine border there is holed up at Madang, undergoing repairs.
It is time for our government to get serious about monitoring the movements between our two countries. It is a matter of national security, of economics, of possible threats to our animal and plant security and other issues.
With things like cocoa pod borer rattling our rural industries, we can ill afford to drop our guard when it comes to national security.
Our farmers in cocoa growing provinces are suffering badly as the introduced pest ravages their plantations. Bougainville has banked largely on restoring its pride of place as the nation’s number one cocoa growing domain. This and many other crops in the country could be endangered if we are not keeping track of people and boats that travel between the two countries and other neighbouring islands.
It’s something our Government has failed to tackle and considering prominent members of the Government are from West and East Sepik, it is a shame and a disgrace!
MEANWHILE talking about security lapses, the cry of a Southern Highlands paramount chief for a better deal for Papua New Guineans employed on LNG project contracts is a cause for concern.
The validity of his claims is yet to be verified but the mere fact of the stopwork on site and the tensions created by the claims must give the joint venture officials and our government officers cause for worry.
Billions of kina are being pumped into the national economy in the first year of the project.
But if we cannot strike a quick balance on basics like wage rates, we foresee a continuing thread of negative news to do with the LNG venture.
It is very early in the development stages. If there are “grey’’ areas like this emerging, we tend to think it is because of the rush to sign agreements and without pinning down all the details.
Perhaps the ministers who were rushing from Kokopo to Moresby to Cairns and Brisbane to get deals okayed can start shuffling to places like Tari and try to fill the gaps in agreements and ensure the theoretical documents will be made practical.
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