Villagers living on and around the site of PNGs first Special Economic Zone, the Pacific Marine Industrial Zone in Madang, frustrated by a lack of government information and awareness about the project are hosting their own Forum this week to learn more about what is proposed for their land and seas and what the likely impacts will be. This is a report on the first day of the Forum.

By Nancy Sullivan

Invitations to the event were sent to key stakeholders and officials, including Madang Governor, MP James Gau, his predecessor and now Attorney General, MP Arnold Amet, World Bank representative in PNG, Laura Bailey, and MP Gabriel Kapris, the Minister for Trade and Industry. Today people from Karkar to Yabob, from all the Rempi and Kananam Villages, leaders and councillors and womens reps, all attended this most important PMIZ Forum in Rempi. But the only MP that came was Member from Sumkar, Ken Fairweather.

People came to hear more about the constellation of acronyms that now surrounds all this secret business: EIS, AIP, PMIZ, PNA, DWFN, IUU, ROO, PSF, EEZ and most importantly, SEZ. The Special Economic Zone. First we had what sounded like a tourism-friendly Marine Park, which morphed into an international tax-free zone almost overnight. Now the zone will include wharfing and storage and housing and a self-sustaining power and sewage plan that promises to make industrial carnage of the land, sea and reef in Madang. All new concepts to landowners who have never had an awareness talk, never had seed money offered to them, never signed a piece of paper regarding this alien world of Special Economic Zones and 30,000 unskilled jobs, and dormitories and relaxed labour laws and, most critically, the promise of never again being able fish in their own waters. They face the prospect of scores of purse seiners from Taiwan and Japan and the Philippines parked offshore, glaring their klieg lights, clanking fish to containers, and droning industrial generators all night and day as they banish all viable marine life from Vidar Harbour. Which, by the way (we learned) is to be excavated and landfilled and its people relocated to no specific site, but away and outside the acres of steel fencing that already encircles the proposed PMIZ.

Mothers, as well as men and youth, are desperate to learn more about the project


Ken Fairweather reminded us that even the Karkar islanders to come dock on the northcoast road nearby to sell their copra, will never be able to negotiate (even if they were allowed through the throng of vessels) that route again. We heard stories from the former Human relations Supervisor of RD Tuna who was forced to resign for organizing a union election, and from women who work in the plant for less than a living wage, performing skilled jobs for unskilled wages, resigned to never seeing the promised spin off businesses that were conditions of RD’s establishment in Madang. Councillors scorned Benny Allen for never giving them an Environmental Plan, but freely signing on their behalf an ‘Agreement in Principle’ at an upmarket hotel in Port Moresby.


We were also reminded that the 2007 national budget allocated K25 million to Madang for the ‘Marine Park’ it proposed at that time, and yet when this money never materialised, and MP from Sumkar repeatedly asked Gov Amet where it had gone, who would never say. It was Peter O’Neill who explained almost blithely that the money went to Commerce and Industry, and that once it was spent all those beneficiaries would lose interest in the project no doubt (i.e. not to worry, Mr Fairweather). Now we know how Gabriel Kapris could afford to send the Chamber of Commerce and Kananam villagers to Mindanao, where they were feted and escorted through great Special Economic Zones (but perhaps the not slums where their workers reside). And those MPs did not lose interest, because suddenly the World Bank and the ExIm bank of China offered even more party favours for the middlemen grand fisheries/tax free zone schemes. Money all around! Licenses and access fees from Distant Water Fishing Nations everywhere! Reems of paper plans that include everything from ‘conflict resolution courses’ and ‘HIV awareness programmes’ for the poor villagers who once lived off the sea at Vidar and who would soon be living off handouts on other peoples’ land (but would never learn about their fate from these MPs themselves).


In the morning I presented an outdoor powerpoint (which actually worked on a sheet and by genset) about the history of tuna in PNG, and what a PMIZ with 8 new canneries will mean to China and Taiwan and the Philippines but what it also risked for PNG’s goodwill amongst other Pacific Island Nations and signatories of the Nauru Agreement. What it means for the tuna stock, and perhaps even for the special derogation of the Rules of Origin by the European Union made for PNG. In 2008 PNG made a notification to the European Commission to use the specific provisions of this special concession for fishery products. This affects tuna mainly, which is a highly sensitive product for the EU. The derogation of the rules of origin also constitutes a threat for the sustainability of the tuna resources of the area, since it facilitates the use of raw material coming from any country vessels, and eventually Illegal, Unregulated and Unreported (IUU) fishing. This derogation may have various negative effects, not least:

• It is unfair towards other African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries now required to respect rules of origin;
• It jeopardizes the PNG relations with out Partners to the Nauru Agreement States;
• It negatively affects the European tropical tuna industry; - It will not contribute to local employment since many foreign investors benefitting from the Global sourcing provision are employing Non PNG workers;
• It will negatively affect the environment, leading to pollution and over-exploitation of tuna resources in the Pacific;
• It might contribute to illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.

After leaving the forum, I stopped by to visit a little baby girl living just up the road in Rempi. She'd been delivered, in the back of a vehicle, barely 3 weeks ago, the sixth child of a relative's family. Beautiful, perfect, just opening her eyes to the world on the eve of this possible industrial invasion: what will this little girl's future be?