Comments

Mr Robert Mek, "Hard times create strong men, strong men create good time ... ". G. Michael Hopf. Your story is inspiring and I hope to read a full autobiography in the future if I'm lucky. All the best in your final year of study @UPNG and may the good Lord continue to lead you ...

Very inspiring ... keeping rocking brother 🙏

Very inspirational, commitment, sacrifice and struggles is most important to become successful person.

What an inspiring story of self-sacrifice, commitment, and endurance that pays off. The characters you displayed are associated with many successful men on the planet. Your story is an inspiration to others who may be struggling with the same situation. There is always a light at the end of the tunnel. Good luck in the remaining months of your school life.

An inspiring story of hardship, perseverance, and triumph. Congratulations, Robert. I wish you well in your endeavours to assist others access opportunities for education.

Awesome ideas! Love the research questions. Just one random thought, is it possible to relate climate change and it’s effect on the alternative use of the lands and also human behaviour as it could be a possible risk factor for the disease outbreak.

btw, as part of a current household, agric, nutrition survey we're conducting we'll be including some questions related to land use choices, including setting aside forest areas for carbon offsetting ... it may be too hard, or theoretical (depending on prices and different periods of commitment), or individuals may feel they cannot respond over community owned resources ... but, hopefully it will elicit something useful ...

Dear Mr. Wisa, Good decisions come about when you are better informed ... please just to share bit of concern with you. Seek further advice, this might share some light on better utilize your vast forest resources.

PNG is still developing and the national leaders must take caution to every decision they made. Because PNG doesn't have machinery to modify woods products and also we depend on the world outside to assist us. This devpol discussion paper will and was a challenge to the current government.

Sharon, as a privileged white meri living and working in POM, I know only too well the sense of trepidation and heightened awareness that females in PNG live with. What saddens me most is that no-one should have to live with that ever-present sense of wariness when just going about their daily life.

This is a very interesting post, although it raises more questions than it answers. The single case study from Port Moresby (the successful and hard-working female betel nut seller) may or may not be representative, as Kelly Samof makes clear. The story he tells about her is useful, because it dramatises differences which can be found in Port Moresby between the formal, regulated minimum wage and the earnings of (some?) operatives in the urban informal economy. As Kelly freely admits, this case may not be representative of earnings of other betel nut sellers (let alone the earnings gained from performing other informal activities in the city). There are things I would like to know about this betel vendor. Is there some special relationship between her and the owners of the shop outside which she sells her betel nut? For example, is any other seller free to set up a table outside this shop? It seems to be an ideal position, so wouldn’t you expect her to have some competition? If she is making so much money why haven’t other sellers set themselves up beside her? Clearly she has a locational advantage, and enough capital to buy bags of betel on a regular basis. Is there any relationship between her and the owners of the shop? Also the 2003 study to which Kelly refers (which I was unable to download, for security reasons) appears to show an even greater difference between informal earnings and formal, regulated wage earnings. This makes me wonder: if betel nut sales are so profitable why didn’t more sellers enter that market also? Were there barriers to entry which prevented new sellers from competing prices down? The same question should be asked about the other study he referenced. This concerned ‘roadside’ vendors in Madang, and purported to show an even more extreme discrepancy between vendor earnings and betel sellers’ profits. By the way, this Madang case was a rural study, not an urban one. Anyway, it would be interesting to know whether some sort of monopoly was being enforced by local landholders to allow such profits to be made. Kelly also asked, why does anyone accept minimum wage employment in Port Moresby, if informal earnings are (relatively) so high? Back in 1973, Keith Hart wrote about the informal economy in Accra (Ghana). He reported that non-wage (i.e., informal) incomes were more unreliable than inadequate. Returns to non-wage employment varied widely from period to period, around mean levels often higher (occasionally much higher) than unskilled wages (as appears to be the case with Kelly’s lady betel nut vendor). But because of this unreliability people were often reluctant to surrender low-paying wage employment, opting instead to juggle the demands of such work with the opportunistic, though sporadic, activities of the informal economy. People in low-paying formal jobs were often engaged in informal ‘side-hustles’ (or ‘moon-lighting’) which could be more rewarding than their official salaries. People who deal with public servants in government offices or hospitals in Port Moresby may recognise this situation. Finally, I want to make a point about language. Put simply, there is no such thing as an informal ‘sector’. This is because economic informality occurs in every economic sector – primary (e.g., agriculture), secondary (e.g., manufacturing) and tertiary (e.g., services). It is also found in both the private (entrepreneurial) and government (state) sectors. To get the vocabulary right, we should be speaking of ‘economic informality’ conducted within an ‘informal economy’. Forget about the informal ‘sector’!

It's so evident uncontrolled migration fueled by unemployment and uncontrolled drift from rural communities to urban towns and cities is no 1 priority for png govt to seriously take on to counter with appropriate interventions. Failing to do so leaves PNG a potential failed state!