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

The husband of the woman employed at SSTC:My wife no longer works there because she is sick and she was sick on several occasions.Women who work in the Production are not exposed to the fresh air and sunlight outside.They work in the freezer-like warehouse were it is very cold and very easy to catch sicknessfrom others like TB and cough. My wife complained of standing up for 8 hours every 5working days and she has backaches and become very tired in the evening after work. Theyget a 30 minutes break for lunch and head back to work. They have supervisors watchingthem and swore at them when they stop to take a break. She complained of the Filipinosupervisors very abusive in their language, especially the man. They rubbish them and treatthem some kind of slaves.Peter Sirias:We are beginning to see the environmental and social impact of the SSTC loining inWewak, especially Meni village. The horrible smell is hard for anyone new in town to miss.We are located few hundred meters away from the factory and its becoming unbearable inthe mornings and evenings when they are dumping their waste through the Wewak CostalAgencies owned boat “Iona” which takes them and dumps them few kilometers out into theopen sea. I am not familiar with their environmental plans or agreements between thecompany and the state but we as users of the sea have not been anywhere party to it. Wehave the direct implications on our livelihood from the pollution than it has on the companyor the government.Now our sea is becoming too oily for fish and for humans alike. We warn are children tolook carefully at the sea before swim there. That is already a threat to us as people who havealways lived here and our lives totally depended upon the sea for fish. The sea is our gardenwhere we get our fish and money from selling those catches. Now with the coming of thebig fishing vessels ashore have scared the fish to the deeper sea. Their oil drainage havepolluted our sea and killed the fish we normally catch for food. It is also killing our reefsand corals and they are where we catch most of our fish from. Where will we go if our seahas nothing to offer us? We have no land to cultivate crops except for sago which are grownaround here as were are in living in a swampy area and fish from the sea. If they(development) kill our sea then we are subsequently going to die from hunger. WholeWewak Township and Hill have been taken from our ancestors and now they want topoison our sea. We are sea people and are lives depend upon the sea for food and money.Before the establishment of the SSTC we used to catch fish such as Skipjack tuna 100meters from the shore but now we don’t these days. In fact the fish have run short. Wedon’t catch the type and amount of fish we normally do and we go further into the sea butoften come back with less catches. This is a concern to us at Meni as sea people. Thecompany will do business here and go away after their term expires and they will leavebehind all the rubbish and pollution for us to clean up. We very much owe it to our futuregeneration that they will suffer the consequences of our inconsiderate and selfishexploitation of resources. What will we do after all the fish we have is poisoned fish fromthe polluted sea? Will the Prime Minister and his Ministers with the company feed us andour future generation all through? I don’t think so? We have no where else to go, the onlysustainable method of fishing and harvesting resources from our sea is the methods offishing past from generations immemorial to and now we have the responsibility to pass iton to our new generations down the line. I cry in anguish to the company: How much timedo you have left on your clock to exploit my resources and kill my future generation?115