Greenpeace Exposes Broken Promises of Logging Companies and Debt Bondage
Port Moresby, 15 September 2008, Today Greenpeace released documentation of the many broken promises of logging companies in Papua New Guinea’s (PNG) Gulf and Western Provinces.
A documentation team visited remote villages for two weeks, filming and photographing life and conditions within three large logging concessions owned by logging companies Turama Forest Industries (TFI), a Rimbunan Hijau group company and Rimbunan Hijau (RH).
“The overwhelming feeling relayed to Greenpeace by
landowners in the
region is that both TFI and RH are
stealing their resources and
exploiting their people,
while the Government turns a blind eye,”
said
Greenpeace forest campaigner Sam Moko. “There are
also serious
questions about the legality of their
operations and the process in
which logging permits were
granted.”
“What we found were many social and
environmental problems caused by
industrial logging, as
well breaches of the PNG Logging Code of Practice
by both
these companies,” Mr Moko said.
Local people tell of
total disrespect from the company towards them.
Examples
of this include the destruction of sacred sites, lack
of
promised development, withholding royalty payments,
logging too close to
villages and endangering the food
supply.
Infrastructure like roads, airstrips and ports is
rudimentary, for the
benefit of the logging operation,
and usually falls into disrepair once
a company moves on.
The schools and medical facilities do not have
materials,
equipment or medicines.
The industry makes over-inflated
claims about the numbers of people it
employs. Foreigners
do most of the skilled work . PNG nationals are paid
a
pittance for dangerous work, usually done with no safety
equipment.
Payslips obtained by Greenpeace from two RH
concessions, Vailala and
Wawoi Guavi, show workers
working long hours for very little pay. What
money they
do make goes straight back to the company in the form
of
payment for food and other costs.
Many camp workers
are brought in from other areas and have no local
fishing
or hunting rights so must buy goods at the company
canteen,
which is the only store in the area. One
fortnightly payslip showed a
worker being paid K185.25
for 114 hours of work. After costs for food
were deducted
he took home K5. Forestry workers are trapped in a
debt
cycle with logging companies and have no option but
to continue
working.
Ken Karere, from Vailala, an RH
concession, told Greenpeace, “The
workload it’s very
big… You have no food. You have to go back to the
store
and buy food on credit and their prices are very high. All
is
recorded. So once I get paid, all that money goes
towards the credit and
you’re only left with maybe K10,
K15. You have to survive on that for
another two weeks
but after one day that money’s finished.”
“How are
people supposed to invest in their and their
family’s
future on this type of wage? This is not
gainful employment that
benefits PNG’s future, this is
induced indebtedness verging on
slavery,” Mr Moko said.
“These people work incredibly hard and are
still well
below the poverty line. They don’t even have enough
money
to pay to leave the area.”
Life is also not
easy for landowners who live in or next to
logging
concessions.
Kila Oumabe from the Beseremen
Clan, in the TFI-run Turama Extension,
says that it now
takes much more time to find food.
“I have to walk six
to eight kilometres to find food for my
family”, she
says. “It takes all day. Before it used to take two
to
three hours or half a day. I used to walk out my back door
to find
the plants and animals to feed my family.
Sometimes a woman can’t find
anything and comes home at
9 o’clock or midnight and cooks sago only
and goes to
sleep.”
Lee Mara, of the Porome tribe in the Turama
Extension is also concerned
that increased siltation in
rivers from logging is threatening their
future ability
to survive.
“Looking at the environment, much damage
has been done. Our riverbeds
are already rising. We have
sandbanks coming up. We are going to run
short of fish.
Very soon all our fish will be gone.”
Anton David, a
teacher from Omati in the Turama Extension,
standing
outside a basic schoolhouse, said that TFI
helped build the school but
did not provide educational
materials or books.
“Without materials and teacher’s
guides it’s hard for me to
teach, so I closed the
school after three months,” he said.
“The PNG
Forest Industries Association (PNGFIA) and Rimbunan
Hijau
say that they are bringing development to these
remote areas but if this
is what they have in mind, then
they have a disturbing vision for
PNG’s future,” Mr
Moko said.
The World Bank estimates that up to 70 per cent
of logging in PNG is
illegal. Greenpeace believes the
figure is as high as 90 per cent due
to the fact that
many timber licences are obtained without the
proper
prior and informed consent of landowners.
The
ITTO diagnostic report for PNG in 2007 stated, “The
government
and industry have not been able to demonstrate
integrated, economically
viable, ecologically compatible
and socially acceptable forest
management practices in
line with the ITTO Criteria and Indicators.
Forest
management is reduced to monitoring logging operations at
the
expense of overall Sustainable Forest
Management.”
“The PNG Government must put in place a
moratorium on all logging in
PNG until all serious
concerns of forest management are addressed,
including an
immediate investigation into serious allegations
of
corruption between politicians and logging
companies,” Mr Moko said.
“Landowners are suffering
while US$40 million allegedly sits in a
Singapore bank
account of a senior government minister from a
logging
company.”
“International Governments must
urgently restrict the importation of
illegal and
destructive timber into their countries,” Mr Moko
said.
ENDS