The National, Tuesday 19th June, 2012
THERE is a big gap between primary industries and appropriate government authorities, a case study has found. The study was undertaken in mid-2010 by a recent graduate from
University of Natural Resources and Environment, Okrupa Mauro, while
doing a six-month industrial training attachment with New Britain Palm
Oil Ltd. He used field trips in 2011 and identified the same problems in other
plantations in East New Britain, saying if NBPOL was facing such crises
than other plantations were no exception. Failures identified include the absence of proper records from the
Department of Labor and Industrial Relations offices around the country
to provide accurate statistics on plantation labor welfare and
productions for any plantation. The Department of Commerce and Industry kept statistics of exports but
it is difficult to compare individual effort against production.
The study discovered that workers were overworked, woken up as early as 4.30am and finishing at about 6.30pm and strictly working 12-14 days a fortnight. Housing cubicle meant for a person is occupied by 1-4 young energetic employees, or it can be a family living there. Work pressure forced employees to move from certain locations to achieve targets so they did not prepare breakfast. No lunch at all and dinner was prepared between 7-9pm. On social status, it found from only one plantation, 70% of workers were total illiterates, 20% went as far as Grade 6 and only 10% went as far as Grade 8. None of them went as far as Grade 10 and there is a sense of arrogance and social discrimination between plantation laborers and managers.
Mauro raised concerns that if the country had vision for the future of primary industry development and agriculture export commodities, the economic value of labor input and if PNG could use industries raw data to measure and compare performances. Mauro said agriculture was more than just producing food and was a system that underpinned society, including our relationship with the environment
The statistics obtained by this researcher is really shocking. It is terrible to see that the plantation workers are overworked. At least these figures are from the farms in East and West New Britain I believe it could be similar in other provinces that run big commodity plantations. The commodities such as the Oil palm (Oro & Ramu), Tea (WHP), Coffee (EHP, WHP & Chimbu) and cocoa (Madang, ESP, etc).
ReplyDeleteThere is no statistic for the number of hours and days spent in the farms against the amount of salary paid. This is also a parameter that should have been investigated. I believe if it was carried out the outcome would have been terrible, meaning against the plantation workers.
If the government is going out to every political rally and letting the voters know that they are standing for agricultural development what are they going to say about how they will improve the basic live of the plantation workers.