Southern Highlanders Need to be more Proactive and Opinionated

ERIC ALOM

If you are a Southern Highlander, you have a responsibility to express your opinion on issues that are of public interest. More importantly you have a responsibility to safeguard the resources, the income those resources bring to the province and how these funds are utilized within and outside the province, public infrastructure and other interests and the integrity of the province and its people.

There are countless elites, alot in higher places but we keep turning a blind eye on alot of the things that happen in our province, especially on the issues of corruption and misappropriation of much needed public funds. We are failing to educate our people in the villages starting from our family units, clans, and then tribes and further, about the importance of education, healthy living and taking care of our body, independence and abstinence from co-dependency, enterprising, respect for ourselves, respect for elders, respect for others and respect for public property, hard work, commitment and honesty.

We need to remind people that weather we progress forward or stagnate, hinges on our awareness, our mentalities and our approaches to the things that we confront on a daily basis.
The kinds of leaders we elect into parliament is very important as well. They are our voice in government. Therefore it is critically important that we are very careful with the kind of people we assign to be our voice in government. They must demonstrate a high degree of honesty, integrity, competence, knowledge and awareness across a wide spectrum of industries and sectors, trustworthy, motivated and driven from the inside. They must feel the pain and desperation of the average and ordinary folks. After 36 years of wasted opportunities, today is not the time for second chances. We need to be absolutely sure of our targets and we need to get it right this time.

One of the issues that have never been given any attention or scrutiny is the process in which construction or maintenance contracts are being awarded. There is hardly any competitive bidding or tender processes. A lot of these contracts run into the millions and it is important that people know how their money is going to be spent and the exact value they will be getting for it. People will have grounds to hold those responsible accountable, and foul play or corruptions can easily be rectified if people are aware and proper processes are followed.

One example is the awarding of the construction of Agiru Center and Mendi Valley Plaza to Curtain Brothers. Around 60 - 70% of work is transferred to Townsville, Australia, through design and consultation, procurement of second hand building materials, logistics, transportation and management while a shameful 30-40% stays in Papua New Guinea, let alone Southern Highlands. What is the economic benefit of initiating a construction project or any other kind of project for that matter, in Mendi if its is not going to create economic opportunities in terms of jobs for locals, skill training on the job for local labor and other flow-on effects in the province? We want our money to stay in the province so that youths can get off the streets, mothers can sell their produce in the market, our local shops can employ locals and attract outside business into the province. What kind of leader takes jobs away from its people and sends it overseas or elsewhere?

Another issue is ignorantly wasting public monies on projects that have no economic or social benefit to the community. A perfect example is the now infamous Agiru Centre. Although we don’t have many of this type of project, Agiru Centre is a reminder of a BAD economic decision.

There are few points worth noting with regards to why this building is a failure and a complete waste of money:

1. Half of the building space is and has never been used at all. Based on current values for the cost of construction, that would be around K12-15million. This is a lot of money and it would have otherwise been used on a variety of small scale impact projects throughout the province.

2. As it always is around anywhere in the country, regular maintenance and repairs NEVER happen. To date, not one repair or maintenance has been done. The lift does not work. Toilets don’t work. Broken glasses are never replaced. There is betel nut stains and graffiti’s everywhere you turn, fire alarm and sprinkler system don’t work. I could write a whole page about it. Based just on maintenance issues alone, a building over 3 stories was a total NO NO. Yet the administration of the day was more interested in reckless spending rather then finding what works best.

3. Nature of the structure and its location warranted steel hollow sections and precast panels as the best alternative. The contractor being Curtain Brothers, sent at lease 60-70% of the works overseas. In the end, the people of Southern Highlands were left with a lot of deafening bang and an ugly looking building that resembled more like a warehouse than an office.

4. The construction of a 6 storey office space was NOT economically feasible. This is because economic activity was modestly very low and there was no guarantee of it improving. Existing businesses were either closing down or moving elsewhere. Obviously the administration of the day failed the commonsense test or the economics 101 test miserably.

5. Political tension between the factions of the late Dick Mune/Hame Yawari and Mr. Agiru was high at the time and basic services delivery was taking a massive hit. Under that circumstance, it would have been more appropriate to invest on smaller scale impact projects and basic service delivery measures.

A lot has happened over the last decade and a lot more is happening now. We have every democratic right to know the detail of whatever is happening out there, whether it is behind the closed doors of Waigani Parliament House or in a five star hotel room in Singapore, We need to take advantage of the media and the advancing technology such as the internet to voice our opinions and agendals.
Because if we don’t and keep turning a blind eye as we have done over the last 36 years, we are not setting a good precedence for our future generation and we are guilty of it.

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