Fishy business. The Social Impact of SST.pdf - Act Now!

and if any major disruptions occur during its operations the company is prepared toclose down and leave.5 July 05 Meni Village MeetingInterview with Joe Sirias, Chairman of Landowner group of Meni, and community elder, bornin 1950. The village is actually called Meni Tais (swamp). Joe’s people are the original landowners of Wewak Hill and Wewak Township. The Meni people were originally settled onWewak Hill. European settlers evicted them from the hill for the lowlands. They settled on thebeach but the road was built through their village , so they settled in the swamp.Sago is our staple food here with fish from our sea. When we moved to settle here therewere a lot of resentments among ourselves because we were going to destroy our garden –the place where we collect food, especially sago. But we had no other place to movebecause part of the land were occupied by the development of town and the government andthe other part was reserved for other developments by the Catholic Church who had alreadymoved to establish the St. Mary’s Primary School.The Viaq peoples’ land goes as far as the PNG Harbors Board and the present site of SST. Theywere never given compensation from the government for the land. That applies to Wewak Hill,town land and the SST site.We dreamt for a better future for our children, to get better education and other goodbenefits development will bring. We agreed with the colonial administrators to give awayour land for such development and there was no formal land lease agreement with thegovernment or any other person concerning our land. What is funny, though, is that the landthat the government was allowed to establish its operations on was registered as state landand no longer in customary freehold. We never had any formal agreement or documentationthat the land owners had agreed to give the land to the colonial government…The samesentiment is shared by Kreer and Saure and other land owners on which Wewak in sittingon.The PNG Harbors Board site is still under dispute between the government, Kreer and Menipeople. The land may be regarded as state land owned by the Provincial government or PNGHarbors Board, and leased to SST. But they believe the land is still under customary landtitle because both Kreer and Meni have no formal agreement with the state. That landwhere SST is standing on is the boarder between Kreer and Meni (Viaq) customary land. Theyhave not taken any court injunction against the state or the developer (SST) because theywanted development, but now this doesn’t seem like such a good idea.I have to be clear here that unlike Meni, Kreer is not settled by original landowners. It iscomposed by many people who settled there from other areas. They will have to tell youtheir own story but the truth of the matter is that only a handful of the Kreer people can beconsidered true landowners and have the right to their customary freehold land. Here inMeni, majority of us here are indigenous landowners were we inherit land from our fathersand all the rights to pass it to our children and the government has no right to take that rightaway from us. Our children have a right to this land, and it will determine their future tobecome settlers elsewhere if taken for further infrastructure development, or if their rightsare respected they will participate in future developments to improve their living standards.111