by DAVID LEPI
Just before shutting down the Porgera Gold Mine in April 2020 and shedding over 4,000 direct employment besides cutting contracts and indirect jobs from spin off business the Marape government established the PNG Labour Mobility Unit (LMU) within the Treasurery Department as an independent vehicle to mobilise labour.
The preamble of the underlying policy in creating LMU reads, "Draft National Labour Mobility Policy 2021 outlines a vision of “providing opportunities for decent, temporary work overseas for at least 8,000 youth and citizens, both women and men, per year by 2025 to grow PNG’s economy both through remittances and through skills and knowledge transfer to build sustainable industry at home”.
An ambitious programme to create 8,000 jobs as seasonal workers overseas.
Interestingly on that vision in so far as employment is concerned Prime Minister James Marape switched off Pogera, mishandled Papua LNG, P'nyang gas and Wafi-Golpu and in doing so he sent a terribly bad signal to potential foreign investors. And that is the day PNG ceased to see foreign direct investment.
Whilst the labour mobility maybe a good idea in terms of providing opportunities for our grassroots and simple people to find temporary work in Australia it is certainly not a solution to our underlying high unemployment problem. University and technical college graduates coming through the education system cannot be drafted to fruit picking.
Simply economic growth is a prerequisite for increasing productive employment; it is the combined result of increases in employment and increases in labour productivity. Hence, the rate of economic growth sets the absolute ceiling within which growth in employment and growth in labour productivity can take place.
Sadly, PNG has seen zero or considerable decline in economic growth from the year 2021 and onwards- let's say the Marape years .
The decline in the rate of employment in the context t of growth is a matter of public policy concern. Explicitly government failed to integrate employment and decent work into economic growth and poverty reduction to maximize the benefits for people and to ensure that growth is both sustainable and inclusive.