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In an interview with PNG business magazine, Business years old in PNG. We have huge numbers of school-leavers
Advantage PNG, Prime Minister James Marape said that over from tertiary and secondary schools annually.”
the past four years, his government had been working to Samof quotes National Education Department figures,
deliver new resources investment, focusing on five crucial according to which, of the 30,000 school-leavers sitting for
projects – the Papua LNG, P’nyang, Pasca A gas projects, and the Grade 12 national examination annually, only 10,000
mining operations at Porgera and Wafi-Golpu – which Marape continue their education at universities and other tertiary
says will all mature in 2024, “laying the foundation for PNG’s institutions.
next big investment wave.” “And 20,000, we don’t know about. And if we go back
The publication quoted him as saying that his government another 10 years, then by now you have 200,000 Grade 12
had tried to strike a balance between the urgent need to raise students unaccounted for.
wages and the standard of living for Papua New Guineans, “That’s for Grade 12. For Grade 10, about 50,000 Grade
while also ensuring that resource projects in the country will 10 students don’t continue to Grade 11. Such statistics are
be profitable enough to attract investment. frightening and if we continue [on] that path, you are looking
PNG is home to the world’s third largest rainforest at about one million unemployed school-leavers in 10 years’
and is endowed with an abundance of natural resources time. And that’s for unemployed Grade 10 and Grade 12
wealth. However, its large-scale resource extraction-based school-leavers. We don’t know the statistics [for] unemployed
development strategy pursued by successive governments Grade 8 school-leavers. We don’t know the statistics for
since 1975, and which has allowed some of the world’s largest unemployed graduates from universities and colleges in the
mining, petroleum, and timber companies to extract its gold, country.
silver, copper, nickel, oil, natural gas, tropical hardwoods, and “We don’t have accurate population statistics, no
palm oil, is seen as having failed the aspirations of its people. real statistics for economic growth, no statistics for
Says Mako: “PNG has to get out of its low-growth slumber. unemployment. The reality is we are living in a guessing
Waiting for the next big resource project is not good enough. game and that’s a disastrous future for our country. It’s more
The whole country has been given an extremely painful wake- like living in a pressure cooker where things can explode any
up call. Is the political class listening?” time.”
Samof says the huge population of unemployed and restless
youth threatens another ‘Black Wednesday’ in the future. Reported by Clifford Faiparik in Port Moresby
“There is a huge bulge of a youth population less than 30

Opinion Opinion

MPs, a characteristic media show of strength when there of urban rioting, looting and arson in cities such as Port
is an expectation of a challenge. At least eight of the Moresby in 2009 or 2024 or Honiara (Solomon Islands) in
government’s MPs have resigned. Morobe Governor Luther 2006, 2019 or 2021.
Wenge, a member of Marape’s own Pangu Party, has called In the wake of the PNG riots, Marape appealed to his
for an emergency sitting of parliament to secure a change country’s under-employed youths, promising jobs and
in the leadership. Marape’s response has been to reshuffle education. Less than 3% of Papua New Guinea’s 11 million
and expand his cabinet, with Treasurer Ling Stuckey being people have formal sector jobs. Government hopes that
demoted. The move is clearly intended to shore up the ruling mineral resource booms will absorb many of the under-
coalition ahead of an anticipated February vote on the floor of employed, but the liquid natural gas industry has created
parliament, but it resulted in one of those demoted, former little in the way of permanent long-term employment.
Minister for Petroleum Kerenga Kua, joining the Opposition. The country’s other major export earner, logging, delivers
Peter O’Neill, Marape’s 2011-19 predecessor, is angling for a occasional spurts of income to rural areas, but it too cannot
comeback, but his reputation has been tarnished by scandals soak up the annual flow of unemployed school-leavers.
about giving false evidence to an inquiry into a US$1.2 Government appeals to the younger generation to return
billion loan acquired by his government and about derailing to the countryside to take up subsistence cultivation, but
investigations into US$20 million illegally paid to a local law poverty is at its most acute in the rural areas between the
firm. coasts and the relatively resource-rich Highlands. Until
Conspiracy theories spread like wildfire in the wake of Melanesian politicians find some answer to their country’s
Melanesian urban riots. Politicians are often quick to point employment woes, they will need to ensure that their
a convenient finger at their scheming opponents. Yet, police forces are properly and adequately paid.
whatever the immediate triggers, it is the presence of such
large numbers of impoverished under-employed youths in Jon Fraenkel is a Professor of Comparative Politics at
Melanesian cities that accounts for the scale and ferocity Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand.

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