B'ville bureaucracy: Where the Peace directorate fights over chairs
13 September 2017
PANGUNA - I was rather shaken by Gorethy Kenneth’s article, ‘Do away with PNG habits at workplace’, that appeared in the Post-Courier not so long ago.
Behaviour and performance in the workplace is an issue affecting Bougainville as well as Papua New Guinea and I believe some words about the Autonomous Bougainville Government bureaucracy may be usefully written.
When people are recruited by the ABG, they have a mission to dedicate much of their life to keep the government functioning and delivering for the people.
I’m one of these people. And I say ‘give away much of their life’ because, in Bougainville, we leave behind our families and travel north to Buka, deserting them in the villages and entering urban Bougainville. Some people have proper accommodation for their families but not most.
The ABG says we need to find accommodation in Buka that is less than K300 a month, which is almost impossible. Before 1990, when I was a kid, nearly all employees of the then North Solomons Provincial Government were provided with residences within Arawa township.
But we now sleep in our offices in Buka and in the morning pack our things under the tables and get dressed in a bureaucratic mode and saunter high for the world to see us.
If you enter one of our offices in Buka you will see bent and buckled cardboard cartons beside our tables. Those are our sleeping mats.
You cannot expect a public servants to deliver when their basic needs are not been met.
Let me talk about our work.
I am in the Department of Bougainville Peace Agreement and Implementation. This department has four directorates - autonomy, peace, veterans and referendum. It is the most important department for Bougainville at this time.
But the ABG is not supporting us. In Buka this department has no office of its own, meaning it is not housed in one building, Many of us do not know what we are doing despite the fact our work should end by June 2018.
Veterans occupy a space I do not know. Autonomy another spot. Peace and Referendum fight over the limited number of chairs and tables. They occupy the condemned Green House building in the administrative compound next to Buka Hospital.
In the Green House, each day we battle for one of the four chairs. The first to reach the office in the morning owns the day. The latecomer enters the office, looks around, no chairs and goes away. Home of course.
As for me, I’m doing research for the referendum directorate. It requires me to travel and that is why I don’t hang around Buka town.
The research task facing my department is massive and we are falling behind since we do not have the resources. Thus I am running around conducting my work as best I can on my ABG pay packet; not stealing as some people tell me they do.
Research involves communication with the people and in Bougainville the cost of internet and phone communication is very high; as is travel to places further afield.
Some research requires my directorate to go outside Bougainville, especially on voting rights issues for Bougainvilleans of the diaspora outside Bougainville. That’s expensive.
My department should work from Arawa, the most central place for the entire Bougainville population.
In my research people and community governments request me to help them in awareness campaigns, which I have done.
It’s good and important work and I like it…. but hard without those resources.
Roka, you are expounding on this principle: "Good working environment = morally high spirited workforce."
The question that remains is: "Where are the funds from many sources, including development partners, directed for peace rehabilitation?"
We have ourselves to be blamed.
If the situation continues, as it seems it will, I doubt a quicker referendum endeavour come June 2018.
Rather than depending too much on the Peace Office, the mission of peace on Bougainville is everyone's business and people like myself are doing my part individually in my own way.
Posted by: Michael Geketa | 13 September 2017 at 06:58 PM
It's good to air these problems Leonard because ordinary people can appreciate the conditions under which people like you are working and can hopefully support you.
Posted by: Philip Fitzpatrick | 13 September 2017 at 11:45 AM