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

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six hundred women wearing green plastic aprons, hair nets and white gum boots as they skin,loin and shrink-wrap great mounds of tuna. Striding up and down the aisles between them arePNG team leaders wearing special caps and barking orders under the general din, while afemale Filipinno supervisor makes wider rounds. It is a rude sight, all the Sepik ladies standingin for their Marshall Island or Samoan counterparts in similar South Pacific factories. It’s hardto call the step from thatch house on the river to this cavern of sunless barehanded piece-work aform of ‘progress,’ but this is ‘development’ as it stands for women in Wewak today.In an adjoining hall the whole fish arrive to be butchered and made ready to freeze, by a maleand female team of eight or ten workers who chop and stack the fish onto rolling shelves. Rightbeside them lies well in the floor called the ‘sump,’ where guts, blood and offal float in a putridsoup of water, the ground zero of all the factory’s stench. Standing near the sump, which is onlyfeet away from the butchery line and open to the entire production level, one can easilyunderstand the claims of workers vomiting on a daily basis when they start working at thefactory.There is an in-house clinic for minor cuts and bruises, the most severe of which are sent hometo heal. And in another section, fish bones and wastes become chicken feed cereal for saleoverseas and some sites in PNG. The freezers are vast stadiums of cold smoke, and workers rollthe high stacks of lions in and out. They begin and end their shifts by punching a time clock,and the skinning and loining women areThe factory is very clean and orderdly, especially as compared to RD Tuna’s facilities inMadang. Toilet and locker rooms for men and women, well-swept cement floors and efficientventilation all make this a more humane workplace by far than the RD plant. But the smell isthe same: an unsupportably nauseating stench that surrounds employees at all productionstations, but it filtered out by air conditioning in the administration block.This smell comes from the ‘state of the art’ treatment plant, which provides for separatesedimentation and oxidation of the fish and human wastes, after which they are mixed anddisposed of at sea. This is the cause of the terrible smell.96
There is no covering to the oxidizing wastes, although the human wastewater is covered with abed of coconut husks to promote odor-reducing microbiological culture. But at this scale, thereduction is all relative, because when the winds pick up they lift the smells from an Olympicpool-sized stew of cultures and carry them across the town’s lowlands. Is this a sign themicrobiological cultures are dying? As all of this is nevertheless ‘industry safe’ SST workerstend to shrug their shoulders and say they get used to it.There are other questions, too. SST tells us the sludge is dropped 800 metres off shore, towardsVokeo and Koil Islands. This is considered a safe enough distance from the shore to preventcontamination of bathing and fishing grounds. But if so, why are regular islands of filth foundfloating toward shore? And is this dumping attracting sharks? The WWF consultant, indiscussing the Envrionmental Plan, implies that SST has access to monitoring reports of similarPacific Island treatment and disposal situations, but have not reviewed them in their plan. Arethey more concerned about their legal than their environmental responsibilities?p. Labour issuesFactory Life(Anonymous)In the bare white walls of the fish factoryI worked all day just to make ends meetCut and gut and pack it upThat will never get you farThey got me workin' all dayI spent two years in a factoryWith fumes so thick it hurt to breatheDestroyed my throat broke my backI ain't never going backThey got me workin' all dayThey get you in when you're down and outYour blood and sweat is running outOne things for sure its plain to seeI don't wanna work in a factoryThey got me workin' all dayEvery single employee interviewed, formally or casually, complained to us about their wages.During a twelve week probationary period production workers make only 90t hour, which isroughly 30 US cents. (One reason the plant wasn’t built in San Diego). Should the employee betardy three times of miss a day during that three months, the probationary period starts over,thus locking first time wage earners into ever longer indenture to SST.97
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Fishy BusinessThe social impact of
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4. Townspeople and market women 158
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More to the point, the contract for
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‘development’ projects will be
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whole concept of MSY; the problem o
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noted most reasonably that the skil
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• That landowners groups be encou
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This project adopted an open protoc
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public figures who had seen RD Tuna
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suddenly costs the government more
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problems of the poor.’ He pledges
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scores of landowner groups who regi
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areas…There were promises of new
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might say today. This is certainly
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During the 1950’s over 860,000 co
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of reorientation of focus and direc
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But it is the provincial government
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title, sensu the Windjammer, is ‘
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Blue Water Tuna is a private PNG co
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9.5.05: The Bismark Fishing Company
Page 45 and 46: The two landowning clans of Parom g
Page 47 and 48: ilong mi na long tingting bilong ol
Page 49 and 50: ol set ups, say olsem 20 or 30 set
Page 51 and 52: No contact or awareness with Marien
Page 53 and 54: Los Angeles, CA 90021USATel: 1-800-
Page 55 and 56: meters out from its original size,
Page 57 and 58: The Offshore Masters is going to be
Page 59 and 60: I am not aware of any Environmental
Page 61 and 62: “Based on the 970 local labour re
Page 63 and 64: Water Resources Act (Chapter No. 20
Page 65 and 66: The 26 Local Level Governments in t
Page 67 and 68: people were made to believe that ne
Page 69 and 70: Nianguma, so the leaders of the 8 c
Page 71 and 72: 3. That there was a totally unbeara
Page 73 and 74: p10:p12:73
Page 75 and 76: p.14:75
Page 77 and 78: . Marine Ripples articleThe followi
Page 79 and 80: In general, I feel SSTC has present
Page 81 and 82: •how the tuna factory development
Page 83 and 84: Responses to Consent Condition Exce
Page 85 and 86: “Sometimes while working we are t
Page 87 and 88: fisheries myself at one stage and f
Page 89 and 90: N: “Have you sponsored sporting g
Page 91 and 92: never cleaned fish before, that was
Page 93 and 94: IB: “Oh sure, but somebody’s go
Page 95: Philomena Naura: “The smell aroun
Page 99 and 100: Above: four consecutive pay slips f
Page 101 and 102: Above is a list of curses said to b
Page 103 and 104: duties on one of the ships offloadi
Page 105 and 106: on the side of the fishing vessel.
Page 107 and 108: The fishery observer told us that i
Page 109 and 110: Speaking of prostitution on fishing
Page 111 and 112: and if any major disruptions occur
Page 113 and 114: Most of us here are very unfortunat
Page 115 and 116: The husband of the woman employed a
Page 117 and 118: Thomas Nigints was one of the few p
Page 119 and 120: Did SST place FADs in the sea?The c
Page 121 and 122: doing it, it’s going to be over o
Page 123 and 124: Landowners are also deeply disturbe
Page 125 and 126: places or settlement where they are
Page 127 and 128: in the revenue, so when the opportu
Page 129 and 130: And as soon as they’d finished th
Page 131 and 132: There is no legal case as yet with
Page 133 and 134: owns the land legally and therefore
Page 135 and 136: There is still need to recruit more
Page 137 and 138: In regard to the production, by the
Page 139 and 140: The company invited interested peop
Page 141 and 142: strategy is very well used by forei
Page 143 and 144: employees and those whose work requ
Page 145 and 146: The present Human Resource Manager
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working gear? In my section I wear
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working for a whole first week with
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Serah from Manam island, married wi
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stret long mipela ol mama husait I
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The supervisors in the plant/engine
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The color of the sea has changed. F
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Donald Jacob, Catrans fuel distribu
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Kapmandu Service station. Did South
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Three women involved with roadside
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export processing zones and then in
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When we asked if this meant sportin
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then men’s. Usually they’re exc
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The WWF consultant also notes that
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of a company like SST cannot be pla
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East Sepik Governor Arthur Somare s
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The cost of the project is between
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The National Shipping Page, 1.6.04W
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that have similar fish factory set-
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Infofish website : PNG: Tuna export
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Post-Courier 20.6.05185
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Did your application form ask you a
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Do you know whether the Provincial
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The Provincial AdministratorDept. o
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4. Human Resources registerees, Kew
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195
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Under Spin-Off Business Activities
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Finally, Honourable Ministers, Memb
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The adverse non-immune (toxic) and
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low income) will have an impact in
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ed and pink plastic roses are every
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207
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Tuna fisheriesThe management system
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• Monitor interactions between th
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Programme is expanding this program
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This office recommends that, since
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commercial industry still deny any
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REPORTER: If you come and you put t
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Berman, M. 1997. Faust, the First D
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Lutkehaus, N., C. Kaufman, W.E. Mit
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