The Pacific Marine Industrial Zone gets rammed down Madang's throat, but we gag and spit it out

Yesterday 12 June I attended the most frightening public forum ever in Madang, the occasion for which was a first public announcement on the proposed Pacific Marine Industrial Zone to be established at Vidar Wharf

here in Alexishafen, Madang, at the site of the RD fishing wharf. I had been alerted to the plans for this in Chamber of Commerce Meetings last year, when our then-president Bill Kramer returned from a junket to the Philippines with Pete Celso of RD, and gleefully presented us glossy brochures from the marine ‘parks’ and industrial clusters he had enjoyed in Mindinao and elsewhere---explaining how ice cream makers sat cheek to jowl with fast food shops in these charming manufacturing tax free zones. I was appalled---at the chutzpah of Celso and the duplicity of the trip itself, clearly a way of winning over the C of C to what was a plan for economies of scale for RD that could solve virtually all its infrastructure costs here in Madang. Invite up to ten more tuna manufacturing plants to sit on their wharf area, and save all the shipping and transport, not to mention electric and water costs (now that Madang town’s services have been stressed to the max by MCC )—eureka! More profits for RD! And of course the argument is that this means harvesting more proceeds from the huge losses PNG makes in its tuna industry, as everyone fishes its waters, and pirates its tuna, for meager licensing fees, then returns elsewhere to process the fish and really rake in the value-added benefits. Bring the value added or downstream processing to mainland PNG, is the argument, where we can become a ‘hub’ for several Pacific island countries tuna capture and processing needs. With enormous tax incentives, the country can seduce many of the trickle down profits to land here, on our shores, including the bandied figures of 20 to 40,000 local jobs! ---Just perfect, RD tuna times ten!

The idea is in itself so ridiculous that the first Chamber of Commerce meeting left us gobsmacked and not a few members walking out snickering at its ludicrousness. We have untold amounts of social and environmental problems with RD as it is (and they have taken a long time to clean up their act), are facing new worries every day with MCC (not to mention violent ones), and Celso---as well as the National Fisheries Authority and the GoPNG----are waving down Pacific traffic to come and join us.

But that was not what frightened most of us at the meeting yesterday. After rumours and feint awareness talks with local councilors only, we had been hearing all kinds of statistics about this Marine ‘Park’---and could hardly generate fears from the general public who kept imagining dancing dolphins and hardwood benches. Yesterday they showed us with what degree of disdain they truly hold the small scale fishing locals in Madang, the people they professed to admire for their generally ‘bel kol’ and peaceful disposition, allowing them to favour the Madang over bellicose highlanders or even Morobeans in this wonderful economic opportunity! Thirty million GoPNG kina having already been invested, dubious consultants from Goroka (with the appropriately Republican name of ‘Heritage’ Research) enlisted to conduct what the overstuffed and self-satisfied spokesperson Steven Dick (appropriate again) boasted to be a first of its kind, unprecedented social mapping exercise combined with a scoping for spin off businesses—a combined government and private interest research effort--  (voila! The perfect conflict of interest! Get the investors to write their own impact assessment and fill it with ‘small business’ opportunities!)---which, as we discovered in the powerpoint he unabashedly presented, included no genealogies whatsoever---as this was State land, after all, we have impact communities and not landowners---and a negligible discussion of social impacts (which the power point explained as an assessment of the ‘socioeconomic status’ of these communities)---as well as a series of 'awareness' talks that would make impact communities ‘feel comfortable’ about the project, and thus cultivate an ‘appreciation’ for its importance.  This, I take it, is the government’s definition of what a social assessment for major resource developments should be.

 

In one slide we saw a list of the ‘Fundamental Understandings’ about this Pacific Marine Industrial Zone (which has its own dancing tuna logo already, not to mention prospectuses available on the NFA website, and numerous government administrators dedicated entirely to its ‘roll out’---including Orry Becker, Project Coordinator and classic bagman). These were:

1. PMIZ land is alienated/State land. [I.e. Fuck you if you think you still own it]
2. No landowners—only PIAP Project Impact Area People [A new non-status]
3. The spinoffs are opportunities—not rights! [This might have come from the mouth of Celso himself, so frustrated by the machinations of Kananam people that he quickly took back all the spinoff businesses of RD from locals]
4. Spinoffs are to be arranged with PMIZ project owners only [forget making your own profit from this]
5. Catch the PMIZ boat or Miss Out!

And it was this last statement that finally stuck in the craw of most Kanamam, Siar, Sek, Krangket, Rempi, and other Bel community leaders, members of the Madang Peoples Forum, yesterday, as they realized they were being slapped in the face with a fate accompli and not, as assumed, being asked their opinion.

Another slide proposed to tell the several clans of the effected communities areas which ones were to benefit vaguely from the BSA agreement, in percentage proportions according to their ancestral use of the Vidar Wharf land (Sek 50%, Rempi 30%, Kananam 20% were their figures), and they listed the clans themselves as:

REMPI : Galgal, Gadbid, Matbob

SEK: Guzub, Kidapein, Panukumak, Pauwaden, Matanam

KANANAM: Gamarmatu, Gewanen, Panufon, Nuwo

And that’s it. Naturally one after another community leader jumped up from their seat to announce that their clan hadn’t been listed and that they were to be directly effected---their fishing, their seas, their villages, their coral reefs, their livelihoods, their health etc.---who was this bozo to tell them who was ‘impacted’ and who was not?!

At one point I said the reasons for this free for all were because the tuna in the Mediteranean had been restricted and now people were freely pirating in our own waters and we know that the amount of fish legally taken is always but a percentage of the overall fish caught, and so this project proposed to invite the problem right into our country rather than solve the problem of a diminishing tuna stock….etc---and in response, the smug NFA rep (who not only whispered to his colleague throughout my comments but virtually sat through the entire three hour meeting playing solitaire on his computer--with imperious disregard even for our Governor, who sat amongst us)explained that what I was talking about was far to complex for these landowners to understand and should be raised in another forum---to which the auditorium collectively groaned and barked, and I said, these people all completely understand what Ive said, they are intimately involved with fisheries issues! Arrrgh! the fairly growled. At another point, when I asked the ‘social mapping’ man if he’d read the RD Tuna report, he said, no, and he has no idea what RD is doing, I shouted back “Well you should!” and again the auditorium yelled for him to get off the stage, he knew nothing---bring us a Madang person to conduct our social mapping! they demanded.

Finally, and most vociferously, they demanded that, despite all kinds of assurances that it would simply be ‘symbolic’, there will be no ground breaking for the PMIZ next week!

Democracy in action. Thank god for the Madang people.

Favorite moment: When they tried to play the promotional VCD for the project and it kept skittering on the monitor, one by one people shouted, "It's corrupted!" " It's a corrupt CD!" ---until the Governor turned and said, Watch your words, and someone said, "We are!"

Comments

[John]

great post... horrible issue that we're facing in Madang. Thanks for brining it to our attention.