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

Whist it is good to attract investors into our country and in this case to Wewak, it shouldalso bring some real benefits that benefit the people. Such big multinationals brings with itlots of expectations and should at least fulfill some of its community obligations andparticipate well in building our community socially and economically. As it is the case forSST, nothing and in no way is the community and local land owners are benefiting. It’s thefactory that reaps all the benefits if you will of the investment at the expense of thecommunity.The company has made mention of giving spin-off benefits to the local but I don’t think thatany such agreement was formally entered into between the company and other stakeholders.If the company made verbal promises, you can’t relay on but has to be in writing and formaland that you have evidence against the company to peruse the case is in court.There were some talks about some spin-offs which was administered by the ProvincialCommerce Department here. People did have their applications in with a K50 as applicationfees but nothing happened. As a result most of the applicants reimbursed their money. Nowall the spin-off promised to the local people are basically run by the company itself such asthe catering, messing, maintenance, security, transport (not provided).I’m afraid the company doses not have any Training and Localizations Program. I was apersonal manager so I should have known very well if such as program was available.Distrust is one of the things I find to be quite common in the company. It’s a sign of poormanagement skills. The SST General Manager is one of those you will not trust. He saysone thing and does another.Also racism is very obvious in the company. The local in the middle management are undermind and looked down at. The foreigners want things to be done they way of thinking.Believe me in that way you will lose your good workers and make them discouraged. Theyhave a lot of racial abuse and the poor attitude is that under the colonial rule we were madeto believe that being black is inferior. The SST employees accept that they are black whichmeans like a second class people. In fact the previous Financial Manager was ordered out ofthe country because of his racial abuse and attitude towards the locals. The foreigners thinkthe PNG are nothing even if we have better qualifications. I can tell you that most of theAsians in PNG are all dropouts from grade schools. Most of them have forged qualificationsand find their way into PNG.In effect the SST factory here is a political winner more than anything. East Sepik leaderswanted to show others that are winners and don’t care how in affect the lives of the ordinarypeople at the grassroots level. There are other more factories on the way as I mentioned ofthe Offshore Masters owned by Malaysia and that is going to be a cannery and we areexpecting some more problems of smell and other pollution.I feel so sorry for our country so blessed and rich with natural resources yet poor. We don’thave to invite thieves from outside to reap us off. We cannot compete with the advanceindustrialized countries of the world because they are already there are we are very far fromthem. We don’t have to compare ourselves from others and try to rush into developmentsuch as exploitation of our natural resources. We don’t need it- we have our land to fallback on. Other people in other countries don’t have land like we owned and that’s a goodthing about PNG. Our so called leaders make very shallow thinking decisions to invite“investors” friends to steal and for them to squander such money. The divide-and-rule140