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

The loinery was supposed to be at Kolan [Yawasoro], near the mouth of the Hawain river,out there. They moved it, and it shouldn’t be there. The wisdom of the project was to bringinfrastructure to those people out there, roads, and spin-off businesses and preferentialhiring, this was the deal. But then because these people threatened to withdraw, theprovince just offered them this other site. Yes, the company was saying it’s going to beexpensive to get it done, and they wanted savings, and this is why they moved it. They didnot offer anything in spinoff business at all for this, nothing. It’s politics you know. ArthurSomare should have been with the people, but in this case it’s the company that isbenefiting more than the people. They really missed out, the company really benefited a loton this exercise. I mean, they had given the contract for the building of the factory to..uh,Heydridge..and they were subcontracting to SBA. I mean someone went over and took aphotograph and sent it to the Ombudsman Commission, it was sent a photograph of the signat the factory that said it all—contractor, subcontractor, everything, so the Ombudsmanwent over and did their own investigation. So what they did was they took the sign down,and they put a up a sign that said Richard Cowley (?) engineering—he’s the chicken feedman, the one who has the contract with catering. The chicken man. So they came in andused his name as a front and gave him this chicken business in return. They used his name.He’s not experienced, just because they used his name to cover up their contract.They did the same thing with the Mobil station, the old Mobil station—closed now. Whathappened was the old owners, they uh…SBA was forbidden to take any more Ausaidprojects, they were forbidden from accepting any more contracts, because they had takentoo many and not completed them. So the Office of Rural Development banned them fromnew contracts. But then the road contract to Timbunke, to upgrade the road, and this wassupposed to be done in the name of the two men who owned the Mobil station, and it wassupposed to be completed in three months, but they finished it in a few weeks, just gradingit, that’s all. Not all the way through. So they got K 150 million for that. And as soon asthey’d finished the ORD started investigating and they found that they asked thesegentlemen whose equipment this was grading the road, and one of these men is a churchgoer, so he told them SBA. He told them, and they cut him off. So now he’s bankrupt andhasn’t got the money to run his station, and SBA has all the money.Same with the new courthouse, supposed to be at Kreer Heights, it’s all overgrown now.The man who got the contract had no equipment, so who did he subcontract but SBA? Andso when the ORD found that out again, they stopped it and nothing’s happening.56