Ann: Ramu Update , page-3

I'll attempt to give you a different perspective of what is actuallly happening there.

In PNG land is everything to the people and put it simply it is the source of livelihood.

People have lived off the land for generations for the necessities of live (food, shelter, medicine, water, etc). There is no such thing as 'fall back' for a typical villager in PNG. For instance, in Western societies, the fall back is government. For a villager in PNG, the only fallback is the land and about 85% of the population live in the villages and hence entire dependence on the land.

In the name of development, growth and revenue; livelihoods get destroyed. There are saferguards and frameworks in place to protect the villages and inhabitants but deals are usually done in Port Moresby, Brisbane, Toronto, or anyother the headquarters of resource companies and hence 99.9% of the time it is not equitable. This is the fundamental cause of disruption to resource projects in PNG.

Specific to Ramu are:

(1)Chinese nationals have come into PNG via the Mine Operator under the pre-text of been qualified professionals (ie Engineers, Geologists, etc) but in reality they are either working are brought in to work as labourer at lower wages thus taking away the employement opportunities usually reserved for the landowners.

(2) The resource industry is well established in PNG (Ok Tedi, Lihir, Oil& Gas, Porgera, etc) and the qualified professionals, mine workers and trademen/women are used very high standards of mining operations (community relations, health, safety, environment, camps, hygiene,etc), however the general consensus in PNG mining circles is that Ramu falls far short of these stadards.

It does not surprise me that there are disruptions and it won't be the last.