Latest news with #EastSepik
RNZ News
14-07-2025
- Health
- RNZ News
Free medicine on offer in PNG's East Sepik
The Governor of East Sepik in Papua New Guinea, Allan Bird, has announced a partnership with a local pharmacy to improve access to drugs and medicines.
RNZ News
13-07-2025
- Politics
- RNZ News
Allan Bird: Punishing offenders must come first to tackle PNG's cycle of violence
Allan Bird Photo: Facobook / Allan Bird RNZ Pacific has been looking at the pervasive levels of violence in Papua New Guinea and how the country might overcome it. According to the Human Rights Watch World Report 2024 , violence and conflict over resources have resulted in more than 400 deaths and displaced over 20,000 people since the 2022 general elections. In May, Dr Sinclair Dinnen, a security expert at the Australian National University (ANU), spoke of the fraying of the consent of the community that police used to be able to rely on. He said some of this can be attributed to behaviour on the part of the police force itself, along with the fairly violent context in which many people find themselves living in PNG. The executive director of the Institute of National Affairs, Paul Barker, told us last week that the lawlessness is, at least partly, a reflection of the social and economic plight of the country. He said beefing up the police alone, as the government is planning to do, will not work if it does not take the wider community with it. The governor of East Sepik Province, Allan Bird, told RNZ Pacific that the immediate focus must be on policing, with a hard push to punish the offenders, before there can be talk of jobs and education. (This transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.) ALLAN BIRD: For violence, I think the most important thing is that we need police to actually identify people, prosecute them and put them in jail, as a deterrent. At the moment, one statistic we had some time back was that we get about 18,000 arrests for violent crime, and out of the 18,000 we get something like 200 convictions a year. So, it is almost like a licence for people to continue doing it. Until we get more boots on the ground in terms of policemen, better preparation of case files and better prosecution, these things are not going to get better overnight, unfortunately. DON WISEMAN: I've been speaking with Paul Barker. He says there's a whole series of factors involved in this. There's the lack of opportunity that people have, absolutely lack of jobs, lack of proper education opportunities. This is a problem that's very common around the world right now, and I guess going to become increasingly so. And he also says it's all very well to up the numbers of police, but they've got to be properly resourced. They've got to have plenty of vehicles, and there's got to be a lot more involvement of the community, because these problems are bigger than just lawlessness. It's a breakdown of social values and everything else. AB: I totally agree with that. My thinking is it is a chicken and egg question. Now, what do you do first? Do you go out and try to create the jobs and get people educated and all of that? We have got seven million people in this country that are already victims of these failures in the system. Those people are already there. Education is going to take us 20 years, and of course, we have got to do all those things. We have got a government that is totally inept. It does not know what it is doing, and we are not going to get the jobs that we need in the next six to 12 or even 18 months, unless you have got smarter people running the country making better decisions. So that's the reason why, for me, I am cutting straight to the policing because unless you get smart leadership in Papua New Guinea, I will be dead by the time they sort those things out to be honest with you. I am going for the easy win at the moment, which is, beef up the law and order. And if you do, there might be people who would be interested to come and invest their money that will create jobs and opportunities and all of those sorts of things. In fact, there is been almost zero investments in Papua New Guinea in the last 15 years. We are not doing really great in the jobs area, to be honest. DW: Takes money, of course. AB: It takes confidence. It takes a lot of things for private sector to come and invest their money, not just in Papua New Guinea, but anywhere else in the world. They look for security for their investments. No one is going to come and toss a billion kina, billion dollars in Papua New Guinea to sort of invest in something if, you know, they don't trust the government. They don't trust the systems, if there's no law and order. It comes back to your chicken and egg question.
RNZ News
11-07-2025
- Business
- RNZ News
East Sepik Province in PNG gets innovative to solve health issues
Allan Bird says that in the absence of functioning medical facilities around the province, they got no choice. Photo: AFP PHOTO/Torsten BLACKWOOD The governor of East Sepik Province in Papua New Guinea has announced a partnership with a local pharmacy to improve access to drugs and medicines. A deal between City Pharmacy Limited, the Provincial Health Authority, and the Provincial Government aims to ensure that Sepik residents have fast access to quality medicines, free of charge. The provincial government is making a payment of PGK 500,000 (about US$118,000) from the Provincial Services Improvement Program (PSIP) to the pharmacy company. The company has outlets in Wewak and Maprik, with others planned in Angoram and Boram Hospital. RNZ Pacific asked the East Sepik Allan Bird if half a million kina would be enough. (This transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.) ALLAN BIRD: No it won't. We've got three million in the budget for that. We're just starting off with half a million because, like everything that's new, no one's ever tried this in Papua New Guinea before. But I'm sick and tired of waiting for a corrupt, incompetent national government to respond, because I cop all the flack when there's no medicine in East Sepik, even though it's not my job. So, I've decided to bite the bullet, and fortunately, there's a local company that's honest and transparent. It's not one of these 'fly by night' companies that sort of do deals in dark corners, and there's massive kickbacks. City Pharmacy Limited has been operating in Papua New Guinea for, I don't know, maybe 30 or 40 years. It's owned by our Super Fund. Essentially, the Papua New Guinean workers own a majority of the shares there. So that gives me the confidence to work with them. Allan Bird says no one's ever tried this in Papua New Guinea before. Photo: Facobook / Allan Bird Of course, that they've had two pharmacies in my province operating, you know, almost 200 kilometers apart in my province. There's reach there. When we run out of medicine at the hospital, people come running to me, or they run to another member of parliament asking for us to help them pay for medicine, that's one, they can't find us, then the poor doctor or the nurse or some other medical worker who's already struggling to look after their own family has to fork the money out of their own pocket. This system that we're using has been used by City Pharmacy Limited for, I think, a number of years, with the medical insurers in the country. I'm just really pleased that they're happy to try it out with us. We're running a trial, and then every month, we get a report and we have a look and see how it's working. Because the last thing you need is it's hard enough accessing medical services, not just in my province, but in the whole country. But once people get to the end of the line and they get diagnosed, and the clinician turns around and says, 'Look, sorry, we got no medicine. Here's the prescription. Can you go buy it?' This person's been waiting, traveling, waiting, all of that is probably 24 hours, 36 hours just to get that far and be told, Look, you got to go buy your own medicine. And so given that sort of scenario I want to be able to sleep well at night knowing that my people are being looked after. If the system works out, and the whole country wants to adopt it. I've been critical of the medical suppliers in Papua New Guinea since the day I walked into parliament. It's one of the biggest rorts in this country, and it continues to be so. DON WISEMAN: It's not your only concern about the health sector in East Sepik, is it? You've been at the [Boram] Hospital recently and you weren't impressed? AB: I knew for a while. I knew, like a year and a half ago, that because the rest of the health system - we're rebuilding the entire health system in my province. So let me just start by saying that. But I didn't know that we had makeshift facilities because all the other facilities around the province are not functioning, and this specialist hospital, which, when we first designed it, we didn't design it with what you might call an outpatient facility, because it's not meant to have one. But in the absence of functioning medical facilities around the province, we've got no choice. We got to bite the bullet. So I allocated the money sometime last year, about 18 months ago. I hate these government systems that take so long. And I was quite crook on Monday morning as well Sunday and at 2am in the morning I had to go to the hospital. And I think maybe God wanted me to be sick so I could see all of this. So when I saw it, it broke my heart. I mean, these are the people I represent. So I've said to them, Look, you guys, have 60 days to rectify this. The money is there. I want this facility built, you know, I don't want to come here and see the same thing happening again. So we've got really crazy systems, you know what I mean? And they're so cumbersome, you know, it just doesn't help us. But I've said to them, 'Look, I respect the processes, but can we push it a little bit faster? Because 18 months is simply unacceptable.' Now you've got people lying around in the corridor, out in the open with an IV in their arm, sleeping on the floor. That would be unacceptable anywhere else in the world. It should also be unacceptable here.
RNZ News
10-07-2025
- Politics
- RNZ News
Marape's forest promised dismissed as 'empty gesture' by PNG advocacy group
Logging ship, Turubu Bay, East Sepik (taken from cover image of 'The FCA Logging Scandal' report). Photo: Oakland Institute A community advocacy group in Papua New Guinea says Prime Minister James Marape's promise to stop issuing new forestry licences will do nothing to stop illegal logging destroying the country's remaining forests. Marape reportedly told the Green Climate Fund in Port Moresby that no new forestry licences will be issued after 16 September, PNG's 50th anniversary. He pleaded with the international community to act urgently and decisively to preserve the world's oceans and forests, calling them the lungs and lifeline of our plant. But ACT NOW campaign manager Eddie Tanago calls this an empty gesture because current licences will allow logging for many years to come, especially with the government failing to enforce its own rules. "Stopping new licences will not stop the illegal logging that is destroying our forests and will not stop the human rights abuses by foreign logging companies and their tax evasion and money laundering," he said. Tanago said licences already in play will remain valid for decades and the prime minister's promise will not stop these licences being extended in the future. He said at least one-third of current log exports still come from areas that were issued logging permits in the colonial era, 50 years or more ago. According to ACT NOT, these are permits that have been repeatedly renewed without the consent of the current generations of resource owners. Tanago also points to ample evidence show logging companies routinely operate outside their logging permit boundaries, but the authorities never action to stop them. He said the National Forest Board placed a moratorium on issuing new Forest Clearing Authority (FCA) licences more than two-years ago, but one-third of log exports are still coming from these FCA areas. This is despite the published evidence that the FCA licences were obtained under the guise of bogus agriculture projects and the logging is illegal. ACT NOW said the PNG Forest Authority has proved to be totally incapable or unwilling to enforce Papua New Guinea's forestry laws and as a result illegal logging and associated forest crimes remain unchallenged. Tanago said if if Marape is serious about preserving the country's forests, "then he should order a full public inquiry into the FCA logging scandal and order the suspension of all log exports until the legality of individual licences has been independently verified."
RNZ News
10-06-2025
- Business
- RNZ News
Lift for farmers in PNG's Sepik through EU aid programme
Cocoa tree in Papua New Guinea Photo: RNZ A number of United Nations agencies working in East and West Sepik in Papua New Guinea over the last four or five years believe they've helped improve the livelihoods of more than 100,000 people. The European Union funded project, through its EU-STREIT (Support to Rural Development, Entrepreneurslhip, Investment and Trade) programme, has been helping farmers in isolated areas to improve production and sales. A senior agriculture officer with the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Dr Rabi Rasaily, told Don Wiseman that through teaching better techniques, and seedlings, upgraded roads and help with marketing, they have improved the value chains for cocoa and turmeric growers. RABI RASAILY: The cocoa and vanilla is mainly for the export commodities, export markets, international markets, and maybe a few here in a country, for semi- processing. But for fisheries, is mainly targeting or working towards the nutrition aspect, how we can mitigate the chronic stunting, especially in the East and West Sepik. So for fisheries, we are working for only for the aquaculture, riverine and the coastal fisheries, not the marine. So these are the three value chains that we are working under component one. The second one, it is more on the enabling environment. So all the other interventions which will complement these value chains, to improve the value chain, like, for example, I mentioned earlier, the ILO so who are responsible for improving the infrastructures, that includes the road infrastructures, the feeder roads, or the district roads or the provincial roads that connect to the market, especially for the cocoa and also, of course, for the other reasons, for vanilla and others, for safety and security and other issues are there. So they are supporting these cocoa farmers, or the value chain, other value chain farmers on access to market through the infrastructure development, but not only the road, but they will also work on the waterways, because many farmers along the Sepik Rivers, or the other side of the Sepik rivers, and its tributaries, so where they can bring their commodities via dinghies or canoes or banana boats, motor boats. In addition to that, they also focus on the airstrip, the rural airstrip, where the farmers can bring their products as well as, of course, supports to their medical emergencies and other social benefits. Don Wiseman: Let's start with roading systems. These are areas where, essentially there were no roads, were there? RR: Yes, there were roads, but all were in bad conditions, not motor-able, just like, let me say, as a bush track. To these all enabling environments, like, for example, the roads, like those are the bush tracks. They were already some kind of road sections there under the provincial administration division of works. They were there, but it was not functional. That was not a motor-able road. So they are improving this. DW: How many roads have you built? And are they sealed roads? RR: No, it is not a sealed road. It's a gravel road. I think it's around 13 roads, 13 roads are building across the East and West Sepik. DW: One of the big problems in the area is the huge amount of rain it gets. And we know the impact of rain on roads, on dirt roads or metal roads, can be catastrophic, can't it - it can wash them away. So who's responsible for the ongoing maintenance? RR: That's what the ILO is working together with the provincial Division of Work closely. There are two methods that they are working on. One, we call it the rehabilitation of the roads, and other one is they are looking into the maintenance of that road, through they call it RMG's [Road Maintenance Group] are formed along the roads, so they are taking care or maintaining those roads. DW: Let's talk about the value chains in which you yourself are involved. Let's go with cocoa, because cocoa has been such a huge thing in Papua New Guinea over this past year, hasn't it? RR: Yes, that's true. DW: So what have you been doing in terms of improving the value chain? RR: Our program, we started in 2020. We starting from the production level to processing and also to marketing and linkages and also semi processing. So starting from the capacity building. Two to three years we were focused mainly on the capacity building, on better productions. The cocoa pod borer infestation [CPB] was huge in Papua New Guinea and also, I think, in many other Pacific countries. So with that, the Cocoa Board had recommended, or have been, after many years of research, recommended the 18 varieties of clone seedlings that are tolerant to CPB. And that's what we were promoting. And together with the Cocoa Board and the Division of Agriculture and Livestock at the provincial level. So we were promoting these technologies of birding or cloning, or we call it propagations of these seedlings, cocoa seedlings, to have it to replace their old blocks, which are infested by the CPB, with this new clone seedlings. DW: What was the degree of take up among the farmers? Did they all take on these new seedlings? RR: Yes they are taking all the new seedlings, they are now replacing their whole blocks. But of course, the vast area of Sepik is used on the rehabilitation of these cocoa blocks. So by this program, we have already distributed around 3 million seedlings, cocoa pod borer-tolerant seedlings that we have distributed. And we are working with 351 groups across all the districts of East and West Sepik. So we have trained around 10,000 farmers on how to do this. And not only that, we have also supported them on the establishment of nursery and bottled gardens. That is where they can get the bud sticks, to clone their seedlings, the root stocks. So that's how we are doing it, so that it is easily accessible for the farmers at the remote areas. DW: This high price that there is for cocoa around the world - the people that you've been working with, are they ready yet to benefit from that? RR: Yes, what we have seen now is really benefit is coming up; like, for example, one of the factors, mainly, of course, what we know is that it's like the cocoa price is record high. And that is, of course, number one... it was really, really a motivation, of course, as you said, so, the farmers to have this global price rise, and they are benefiting it. And another one is that the seedlings that we distributed in 2020, and 2021, and 2022 are already starting the productions. So meaning to say the farmers are really benefiting from this current situation. DW: All right, another product you were dealing with was vanilla; and that also, I think, has been going through a boost internationally, hasn't it? RR: Not really - compared to cocoa, no... the vanilla price has been, let's say, stagnant for a couple of years now. Whereas before the program, I think it started in 2017,18, 19 - the price was really, really high. But after that 2020, 2021, price dropped significantly. And I would not say that the vanilla prices boost internationally or globally now. DW: So in terms of vanilla, what were you able to do there? RR: The same thing that we started from the productions and the processings and other aspects of it. So then the products, and especially what we have like doing it, and, of course, the pollinations and other practices, especially the block managements, how to manage the block, how to do the IPGM, integrated pest and disease management training, and so on and so forth. But the main part here, what we also introduced, or what built in our program, was that killing of the vanilla beans, the green beans. We call it killing because once after you harvest, usually the farmers used to do here the sun drying, the sun drying and killing, which really affected the quality, because, of course, the sunshine... is not there, sometimes you have rain, and they saw the immediate drying or killing of green beans were not possible. But we introduced the water killing method. So water killing method is like you put the green beans in a warm, not 60 to 63 degrees Celsius water, one which is warm you measure. You dip it there for few minutes, and then you take it out, and then you start condensing and other curing process is started. So that ensures the quality improvement in the vanilla beans, the curing beans. The other technologies that we also introduce is the basic type solar dryer, which is kind of a very simple technology. It's not using of any PV system, photovoltaic signal. It's a direct sunlight with the glass, but with the chambers, the hot air drying of the vanilla beans, and it really saw the good results on that. One is the maintenance of the colour, because the practice was direct sun drying, maybe on the open field or on the metal sheets like copper, like the GI seeds or other tarpaulins and like that, the uniform drying was not there and the colour discoloration was also there. ...The other one is, of course, when you dry openly, they are very prone to other infestations. DW: You were doing a lot of work in terms of aquaculture, and so this is to help farmers or families to grow their own fish in ponds. And this practice was already underway in Sepik, but you've just improved it dramatically. RR: I would say yes and also no, because, as I mentioned, there are three areas that what we are working on, the fisheries; the coastal, yes, it was ongoing that people net the fish consumes for the coastal areas, it's normal; but we only capacitate them or empower them through providing the motor boats and other fishing gears, like IFAD, integrated fish aggregated device, and as well as some Eskies and other protected gears to increase the shelf life of the fish. But for the aquaculture, which are mainly on the inland side, it was very - I would say - limited, or none, in most of the districts in Sepik. So that's what the aquaculture came in as a significant support or a significant improvement on the fish diet. They can get the fresh fish even in the inland. So the program distributed the fingerlings from the hatcheries and nurseries that the program supported to the big farmers - some were already established; some were program also supported, and distributed to these inland fisher groups or these finger households, not a big or commercial type. It is just like for the self consumption, as well as if there is a surplus, can sell it to others. So that is on the nutrition aspects of that. The fresh fish is, I would say, is very rarely available in the inland of Sepik region. Whereas the riverine fish, which is around the Sepik River and distributors - mostly they come as a smoke fish or dried fish to the market, but fresh fish, due to all these challenges, like the lack of cold storage, lack of freezers, lack of transportations, so the dried fish are brought to the market. DW: What sort of fish is it? RR: This, mainly for aquaculture, is mainly tilapia. DW: Tilapia? Okay. With these various attempts to improve farming and roading and whatever, what are you seeing in terms of the economic development for the farmers now? RR: Mainly this cocoa or vanilla are for the export markets, and the increase in production or the productivity really helped them. And of course, with the price that has boomed, especially for cocoa, has really improved their economic development, empowered them; their livelihoods also improved. And also, similarly with the vanilla, but also, I would say, the enabling environment, which I was not able to finish, because the digitalization, like the UNCDF, that linking with mini bank or micro banks that we are working on, so they create their accounts, so they go the cashless payments, or they can sell their product to the buyers, and they get the money through these transactions. And also the ITU... the networking, and also the resource centres, where we have established resource centres in public facilities like schools and other facilities, where they can get the training and access to the knowledge materials that are available. And also in online we have online learning materials system we call LMS... Anyone can download it and or watch it. So that one is that, and the UNDP was like in renewable energy, having it installed in the public facility like health post and the schools. So these are also catering services to the farmers and their children, in the rural areas, to get this access to good education and to access to good health.
