Photo Caption: The Wewak State of the Art Stadium

Source: "Red Soil"

 A State of the Art Sports Stadium is standing idle in Wewak town, East Sepik Province since its ‘Ground Breaking Ceremony’ on September 16th, 2010 by the Grand Chief Sir Michael Somare. The main question everyone in Wewak will ask if you start talking about that 19 million Kina stadium is, ‘Why a Sports stadium?’

“Why a stadium when we have bad roads, bridges, hospitals, schools, electricity, water, etc?” they will ask you. Though some may say it is an attempt to develop the province, most others say it is plain stupidity given how deserted it looks and feels like today, 5 years on from when it was opened.

It was once a lively area they said, when it was just a field of grass, known to all as the Prince Charles oval. School carnivals were held, singsing groups performed, church rallies were held, band groups performed, tournaments of all sorts were held and today, it is just a fenced area with grass growing over the tracks, left deserted with no further real construction. Most people believe the construction of what it is, is not worth 19 Million Kina at all, it is way lesser, and all was just talk as usual.

The Prime Minister back then in 2010 was the Grand Chief Sir Michael Somare himself who opened the stadium, with the presence of the Chinese Ambassador to PNG then, Wei Ruixing. At the opening, Sir Michael Somare’s speech came down to the point that the stadium is a wonderful gesture from the government of China to his Sepik people, and the PNG people as a whole will now benefit from that PNG-China relation that he had established.

What the people wanted to hear was basically what the benefit is, why, how and when, and they didn’t get it that day. It was just another ‘PNG-China’ b…sh.t relations, as said in their own words.

Projects similar to this Wewak stadium are popping up all over the country one after another in very short period of time, causing ‘Ground Breaking Ceremonies’ to happen one after another. They come with huge price tags in millions of kina, with the promise of being ‘State of the Art’, yet nothing gets completed, and no one seem to care.

In other parts of the country, people have been forcefully moved from their homes, trees that took years to grow were chopped down in minutes, and even beautiful creeks that give water to the villagers were soiled up to make way for con projects like these to happen, and they never became real. Something has to be done to stop this cruelty now!