PNG riots result of multiple issues - former governor

Transcript

A former provincial governor and government minister in Papua New Guinea says Tuesday's rioting in Madang is the result of ongoing dissatisfaction by locals.

At least one person was killed when up to 500 so called opportunists, mixed with protesters.

Sir Arnold Amet told Koro Vaka'uta what he believes is behind the incident.

SIR ARNOLD AMET: The increasing number of retail shops and some wholesale and a large presence of Asians, Chinese in particular, being employed in these shops and monopolising this industry. It's an issue that has been boiling for some time and it will continue. There was some NGO organisation organising some protest by the citizens to convey to government their concerns.

KORO VAKA'UTA: There were reports that it was possibly to protest against land grabs and capitalism or the planned Pacific Marine Industrial Zone, any truth to that?

SAA: There are multiple issues. Our governments and other land owner institutions have not been vigilant in allowing outsiders to land grab. There has been the ongoing issue of the potential impact of the Pacific Marine Industrial Zone project and as well as dominance of the retail and wholesale market in the commercial sector. It'll all have been interrelated to precipitate what took place.

KV: What needs to be done to ease the situation?

SAA: I think that the government, both at the national and provincial level, need to be far more vigilant in ensuring that squatters from outside the province don't come into the precincts of the town and outlying communities to land grab, purchasing land or simply squatting on land, contributing to the increase in unemployed population in the town. In relation to the continuing Asian influx into the commercial, retail market in town, there is inadequate control of large numbers of non-technical, non-skilled employees that are being employed to simply be so called supervisors and cashiers. The whole increase in there, that is not sufficiently being controlled by our state agencies.  That is causing a great deal of concern. I am personally concerned about it as well.  There needs to be better monitoring of those to limit the influx of those kinds of non-skilled employees to the disadvantage of local citizens. Young people and others who can be meaningfully trained and employed in these sectors are seeing this increase so that has led to some of their grievances.