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

The SSTC and the government are only interested in the monetary benefits they will reapfrom this fishing project at our expense. Their cruelty and arrogant approach to us thecommunity and its employees speaks for itself. I am sure the recent strike orchestrated bywomen factory workers will hopefully send the message. When you are in any managementcapacity and such incidents arise, you know that there is something wrong in the system.The SSTC project is such a project that has all kinds of faults in its system and the strikeover pay by the women is only the tip of the iceberg. It is setting fire to fuel and I won’t besurprised in all these grievances by different interest group will take the opportunity tostorm the factory down. I think the Provincial Government might have a similar knee jerkreaction from the general public of East Sepik Province.The land where the SSTC plant sits on maybe acquired and registered as PNG HarborsBoard land but that does not take away my right as a traditional landowner. By establishingthe very factory my traditional land owner rights are violated and not respected in themanner the whole process was conducted. Our traditional fishing grounds are polluted andon that basis all the nearby villages and Meni have case to peruse against the State and theSSTC. Even the land maybe belonging to SSTC as sublease from PNG Harbors Board butthe resources of the is collective property and belongs to all the East Sepik Islands andcoastal people. If there are benefits drawn from fish from the open sea it has to benefit theentire province than only few selfish authorities to squander the money.We strongly feel that we are been used. The Saure landowners would probably share oursentiments too. It’s a pity they have to move the project from Saure to the present sitewithout proper consultation with Saure people to reach an win-win situation. Even thinghappened so fast that the Saure people and Meni (and Kreer people) were wondering aboutnot knowing where they fit in. There could be some misunderstanding between differentlandowner groups and this is possibly the situation created here by the government and thecompany to divide us and force us into some infightings. But the situation is very clear andit needs all the interest groups to unite as a solid team to show some resistance in a nonviolentmanner or the situation will get out of hand.One SSTC employee from Meni:I worked with the security guard section of the SSTC. We get paid K0.90 per hour forprobation period for 3 months before we are categorized as fulltime staff and paid K1.00per hour. We make on average K8 per week and K80 per fortnight. Its not always true thatmost workers get K80 but some get as low as K30 and the people at the supervisory andadministrative hierarchy get paid at different rate – better than us. The administrationdoesn’t feel the pain and hardship the ordinary people will feel on very low wage scale.Some people have to walks from miles or catch PMV for up to K4 – K8 per day and alltheir money is used up on bus fares. Some don’t have proper working equipment andfacilities but people are paid.The surveillances and monitoring aspect of the fishing--who can be really sure what goes onwhen transshipping undeclared fish or making illegal drainage of waste oil?. If they do it inthe middle of the night, we don’t have the equipment and capacity to conduct independentinvestigations to prove them guilty. Many times breaches of environmental contracts arecomprised through solving it internally such as offering certain favors to the PNGobservers.116