How ignorant and irresponsible our government is

The mandate of the government is to serve its people. How it should operate is spelled out clearly in the country’s Constitution. What we find is that the government of the day is not operating in accordance with its mandate. People’s popular line is that the government was put in power by the people for the people. Is the government really for the people? Look what has transpired in the last couple of weeks in regards to people’s struggle to stop dumping of waste into the sea by the Ramu Management (MCC).

A petition signed by 7,500 people was presented to the Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Environment and Conservation and the Governor of Madang by the Raicoast people of Madang Province. The people gave 21 days for the government to respond to their petition. Instead, the government of the day responds to this petition by amending the current Environment Act. This amendment not only affects the people of Raicoast and Madang but the whole country. If this amendment comes into effect, this will result in the people losing their traditional, constitutional and legal rights to their land once they say yes to development of their resources.

The government has bulldozed this amendment regardless of a current court injunction by the landowners from Raicoast preventing the Ramu Nico Management (MCC) who is the developer of the Ramu Nickel Mine to dump 100 million wastes into the sea. This shows how the government is very irresponsible.

Many years ago, we used to point fingers at outsiders for suppressing and marginalizing our people, this time it’s our elites, bureaucrats, ministers who are doing it. These people should be ashamed of themselves.

We are coming to a time now when citizens have to rise up. We need to stop these types of actions by the government. We should all demand that the recent amendment should be undone or else we are all heading for a total disaster. There is no more time to sit and wait, the ball is in our hands. We either stop it or we lose rights to our land.