Comments

I admire the Samoan people for their devotion to their families and churches. Relationships are the most important thing in life and you will not be happy if you do not have good relationships with others. Samoa, beautiful islands, beautiful people.

Congratulations Fiji Women's Crisis Centre

I am an employer in the agricultural and wine industries. In the past I have been heavily relying on European backpackers for 90 percent of my workforce. 10 percent is made up of local Australians sent out to me by job agencies. And that small percentage are usually very unreliable. European backpackers are only as reliable until they have to move on to another job. We spend many many man hours training backpackers up to productivity then they leave. However I would be very keen to sign up to bring Pacific islanders as an alternative reliable longer termed workforce.

Hi Shaun. Excellent review. One small extension of the opening reference to "whose economies are highly dependent on extractive industries". For Papua New Guinea, the resource sector has averaged only 16% of PNG's economy since 1980, and only 13% of total revenues and grants since 1976. It is indeed correct that PNG's goods and services exports are dominated by the resource sector (now over 80%, up from 50% at the time of Independence). However, and this is abundantly clear with the PNG LNG project, a very large percentage of those export earnings are immediately spent through the capital account on interest payments and dividends to external stakeholders, making the "net impact" on the balance of payments much smaller. For PNG, the indirect impacts of the resource sector, especially through an exchange rate set at a level much higher than if there was no resource sector, means that the incomes and arguably political power of the larger and more diversified agricultural sector tends to be much lower than it otherwise would be. These indirect impacts are difficult to measure, and given the construct of "society" in the book, possibly fall out of scope entirely. However, it is possibly these indirect impacts from the resource sector that have done most to damage PNG's economic and social development. Cheers. Paul.

Unfortunately, the community of people in the Aibai area in South Simbu Province are now completely without cell service. There is no indication of when service will be restored. If anyone there knows anything about this problem we would appreciate hearing from you. Our daughter provides medical care to the community in Aibai and we have no way of communicating with her unless she travels 45 minutes to find a cell signal in a different area.

Good observation Amanda, I hope such exercise will minimise some chronic challenges such as elections, as you mention, and improve communication accessibility thus achieving the National government's ambitions. The sustainability of such initiatives is always a point of contention in PNG.

Thanks Stephen. Interesting. I am curious. What emerged from your conversations as the benefits of the UK ICAI?

Well articulated, Amanda! The ramifications of this rush exercise is certainly great.

Interesting summary of the situation.

It's tough being poor and even harder being a poor woman.

Hi Great work Rohan a very useful resource as I'm in a similar boat not having the luxury of access to a university library anymore. I have just come across this resource that I want to share - https://openknowledgemaps.org/index#search A clever bit of kit and a useful addition to the arsenal.

Thank you to all those who have posted comments on this blog post. Your time, ideas and input are very much appreciated. Many of you have shared similar experiences or concerns to mine. Some of you have raised questions, which I’ll aim to address here. Joseph D Malabag and John I Tambiabu asked about whether SIM card registration is legally binding. Yes it is, under the SIM Card Registration Regulation 2016. The National Gazette was signed by the Governor General in April 2016. Festus Maiginap asked whether telecommunication companies could send officers to rural areas to register their customers. Another option mentioned in media reports since this blog post was published is that churches could perhaps assist with the registration process. Sabine asked about the potential for comments posted online to be traced to a user’s phone number. Stanley Spenzii Mark and Joys also posted similar queries. As much of the Internet access in PNG is through mobile phones, this may be a genuine concern. However, I am not a telecommunications engineer and I am not sure whether a phone number can be traced back – for instance, to a comment published on this blog. I’d welcome some input, if any reader has this technical know-how. Some new points have been raised, which could be worth further investigation. Bobby Kunda, Festus Maiginap, and Stanley Spenzii Mark raised the religious and spiritual beliefs around giving away personal data which are strongly held by some groups within PNG. Sabine raised the issue of handsets being shared. In my research in rural villages in Madang Province during the early days of mobile phone adoption, it was common for a woman to say that she did not own a mobile phone, but her husband did. If a woman does something illegal using a phone registered in her husband’s name, he could be wrongly brought before the courts, as Sabine implies. Stanley Spenzii Mark shared his experience of needing to register a post-paid SIM card. He was able to register his relatives’ numbers at a bmobile Vodafone outlet in Port Moresby, even though his relatives are in the highlands! Some suggestions have been put forth too. Urith suggested that the SIM card registration exercise could have been undertaken in partnership with the National Identification (NID) project. To me, this seems like a good idea, but it’s possibly too late to implement it now. Stotick Kaprangi suggested that Digicel could register SIM cards through an online system. Stotick, this may not help rural villagers too much as many of them would struggle to have the Internet access needed to complete the process. In Indonesia, telecommunication companies are registering SIM cards through online systems, through text messaging, through stores, or through a call centre. The difference is that in Indonesia citizens have identification numbers, so they can use these to register. The PNG context is different and the challenge of so many people not having any form of written identification (or an identification number) is a big hurdle when it comes to SIM card registration.