Comments

Very inspiring article. The only way to bring changes to your community is to work collaboratively with the local leaders and the MPs as well. Students are eager to help but they need financial support to push them. This article written by Gurame Moiya is very informative and inspiring. Keep it up, Gurame.

That is a great Initiative undertaken by the young elites. We need to continue the efforts to make awarenesses to shift the mindset of our people back in the villages and towns. They are the majority.

Very informative and also reflects the many challenges faced by many university students in Papua New Guinea. Thank you Gurame for sharing your experience and also seeing you excel. Keep doing what you can in your capacity to influence the next generation. Kudos, Leader!

Hi Elisapeci, In Fiji, people need to apply through the NEC to be in the pool of people who can then potentially be selected. That is, people need to opt in first, if they want to participate. Then, because these are employer-sponsored visas, they must then be selected and hired by employers, as with any recruitment process. There is no drafting, "plucking", or forced participation of any kind in modern Pacific labour mobility schemes. "Most have little or no skills" is also not correct, they're skills are evidently valued or they would not be hired vis a vis other potential hires in Fiji, other Pacific countries, and beyond. While there are definitely also some English language barriers for some groups, again suggesting that "most know little or rudimentary English" is incorrect and not consistent with either the data or personal experience interacting with these workers. Best, Ryan

Very interesting blog, brother.

Thank you, Michael, for sharing your thoughts and experiences major issues regarding gender equality in Papua New Guinea, especially in our society. I love reading your blog and 100% supported your views on addressing gender issues across PNG. Proud of your achievements and hope we all can fight for better future for our country.

Actually the Archbishop of Suva - Dr Peter Loy Chong is correct in his analysis of the Seasonal Workers | Private Scheme Workers in Forestry | Meat Factory workers being brought from Fiji to work in Australia or Aotearoa NZ 🇳🇿. They are somewhat drafted in as a kind of slaves to fill the labour markets. Most have little or no skills and being plucked from the Rural Villages to travel and work overseas with little experience of living and working in a First World Country. These workers from Fiji in particular know little or rudimentary English and struggle to understand the logistics of life outside their comfort zone of being in an Indigenous Fijian Village (s). Some have died after being denied Rights to take sick leave and see a Medical Doctor. Employment Contract in some instances is signed in Fiji with minimum help from a Fijian Language Interpreter. Agreed pay rate and hours have been known to be altered once they are in the new country of employment. The lifestyle these workers have is substandard. The list goes on.

Valid sentiments echoed by Dr. Bal Kama.

We can all appreciate criticisms when they are presented with detail and substantiated counter-facts. Vailala would have us believe the SMLIs for PNG LNG and P'nyang "drifted into absurdities". There were in total 7 researchers across these projects all with PhDs, 10+ years researching/teaching in Universities, multiple international publications and with either longstanding fieldwork in the cultures they reported on, in cultures exhibiting regional patters and/or peer reviewed by others who had previously worked in the area. I am assuming Vailala would at the very least agree these people are preferable to a Toyota mechanic for the purposes of conducting work on project area landowners? I could write a book on the complexities of SMLI in a development cauldron, the way landowners strategise and play with social structural principles in these situations. More constructively, however, the point I would prefer here to make is (a) the decisions a Minister makes about 'beneficiaries' is not and does not have to be solely reliant on the SMLI - other matters and submissions may come into play; (b) the weak link in the process is that there is no compulsion on the Government to liaise with the SMLI authors to seek clarification and interpretation when forming views on beneficiaries. In other words, if the SMLI was 'workshopped' between the parties in the endeavour of identifying beneficiaries, better value would emerge from the considerable resources es spent producing the SMLIs. Lastly, it would be more helpful if Vailala would, for example, provide just 1 example from the 500+ identifications made in the project SMLIs where they "got it wrong" or "drifted into absurdity"!

Thanks for letting people know what is happening inside haus mahn.

Great to see this so deserved and overdue recognition of Jemima's tireless, rigorous and inspiring work in, about and for the Pacific. Thanks Kevin for writing it, and to all who played a role in highlighting Jemima's quiet, relentless, generous work. With Pacific journalism now under so many pressures, champions like her, with such depth of knowledge and contacts, are critical.

Thanks Robin. I am worried that too few aid and development NGOs are doing these types of caculations. For what its worth, I think you are being too conservative - I think the fall in ODA will be larger than what you estimate as more governments follow the US and UK lead. What is to be done? One of the responses must be for NGOs to pursue market-based sources of capital like impact investing and carbon markets much more vigorously. Of course, traditional philanthropy still has a critical role to play – in humanitarian settings, for example, the role of market-based mechanisms is going to be very limited. We also need philanthropy and development finance to support structures that crowd in private sector capital at the scale we need. Adopting market-based mechanisms at scale is going to require some fundamentally different capability than currently exists in most NGOs. These mechanisms also have the potential to be more sustainable and impactful in the long-term than traditional aid. NGOs now have a very small window to find this capability and make the transition that is required by their radically changed strategic context.