NO REASON TO CELEBRATE

DAVID MURI

WHILE Papua New Guineans nationwide saluted our flag with happy celebrations, in Nipa district of Southern Highlands, two sisters publicly asked a question few politicians will take seriously.

Sisters Ruth and Janet Sol wore black on September 16, PNG’s 35th Independence Anniversary to protest what they see as a lack of real development, prosperity and improvement in law and order and advancement for the common people. Their question was simple - why celebrate when all around, there is little or nothing to show for celebration? It’s a question that nags at the fabric of PNG’s economic growth and prosperity, a question politicians sweep aside with political rhetoric that would rather paint a rosy picture for a country anchored by its natural mineral resources but well known to be mismanaged and poor.

Its poor are faceless that Ruth and Janet Sol so courageously stood up for on a breezy mountainside in Nipa, not far from where the nation’s oil and gas wealth will be extracted at Kutubu. The women asked: “What has independence really brought for PNG after three-and-a-half decades of self governance? Do we really have to celebrate and what for?” Indeed the Sol sisters are not alone in their cry for the suffering majority. All over PNG, Papua New Guineans complain on a daily basis of poor government services. Roads are bad, airstrips are closed, aid posts have no medicine, wharves have fallen into disrepair, bank services are withdrawn, schools have no teachers and the list of lack of government services is endless.

Sadly women, who provide 90 per cent of the labour that powers the agriculture backbone of PNG, suffer the most with PNG having the worst child maternal death rate in the world among other health issues, low literacy levels, family violence and abuse, victims of ethnic and criminal violence. Women are also underrepresented in the 109 seat Parliament where a recent law intends to introduce 22 reserved seats for women. Currently only outspoken Minister Dame Carol Kidu (Community Development) is the only female MP in the male dominated house.

So while the independence celebrations were underway at Nipa last week, the two young sisters were in mourning instead. They were in protest of the nation’s woes, particularly law and order problems. The siblings, Ruth and Janet Sol from Komea village were in black attire, bodies covered with mud and armed with wooden rods depicting bereaved widows in the customary fashion of the local area. “PNG is a widowed nation without a husband,” declared Janet Sol. “We are here (at Soe village) to mourn the death of our uncle who was murdered at a pub in Goroka.

The SP bottle on top of my cap indicates that my uncle was simply killed over nothing, but a bottle of beer,” says Ruth Sol. “People can be killed in PNG for anything...even K2. That indicates that we are very poor and are fighting each other to survive even though we proclaim to be rich and independent,” she continues.

The two sisters said the killing of their relative was a result of a nation losing its focus in containing law and order problems in its society since independence.
Another local Mathew Hiol expressed similar sentiments saying, PNG should be mourning rather than blindly celebrating the anniversary. “Are we celebrating for the ever skyrocketing prices of store goods, for massive corruption, for those dying from curable diseases and for the dilapidated state of our colonial-built infrastructure? What have we gained?” Mr Hiol asked.

The 54-year-old said electorates like Nipa Kutubu were way back in terms of infrastructural developments despite it being the home of huge gas and oil projects.
“If a major oil and gas producing electorate can terribly suffer, I don’t know the fate of my fellow countrymen in Menyamya or Nuku. His big question on independence day is: “Where has all our money gone?”

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