Word: localitis
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...Growing Backlash Roads and bridges aren't enough to placate locals, whose tenacious attachment to their ancestral land is mystifying to Chinese schooled in the communist principle of state ownership. At Ganglau village, a collection of shacks fronting a bay teeming with dolphins and tuna, community elder Mou Bilang complains that most villagers haven't been compensated for the loss of land once used to plant cash crops, save a $125 "dust payment" issued as an apology for the dirt the project has kicked up. "The Chinese promised us free electricity, free water supply, free job training for our boys...
...Most notably, the company has agreed to a 2.5% ownership stake in the mine for a group of local landowners, although many others say they have been iced out of the deal. "For Chinese and Papua New Guineans, who are from such different cultures, it will naturally take some time for us to truly understand each other, and sometimes it is not easy," says Wu Xuefeng, deputy general manager at Ramu NiCo. "Our proposal to tackle all these challenges is to address them within our overall sustainability development framework, [and] we are glad that we have been improving along...
...immigration violations. The foreign workers, it turned out, had entered on visas that prohibited employment. Ramu NiCo, in turn, complained that government bureaucracy was so slow that getting the proper paperwork would have taken years so they were forced to circumvent the rules. But there were other infractions. Local regulations specify that foreigners can only work in jobs that locals cannot perform and that they must be able to speak either English or pidgin. Most of the Chinese workers couldn't speak a word of either language...
...Discrepancies between national immigration policy and local reality are acknowledged even by P.N.G.'s Department of Labor and Industrial Relations. Assistant secretary Nadile bluntly tells me she suspects that most Chinese who entered the country have done so without the necessary visas and work permits. Today, in major cities across P.N.G., the vast majority of so-called kai bars, or fast-food restaurants, are run by recent Chinese immigrants, as are nearly all the grocery stores. But few Chinese have the correct papers to run such businesses. I ask Nadile if she can tell me of a place nearby that...
...keeping economics and politics separate, Beijing is finding that the two have a nasty habit of intertwining. China is also learning that it can't keep a lid on political scandals overseas as easily as it can clamp down on information back home. In P.N.G., for instance, the local press has widely covered a government investigation into claims that corrupt local officials allowed Chinese immigrants to buy passports. In May Prime Minister Somare went so far as to implicate the immigration department, commenting, "We know some are saying, 'You give me a six-pack [of beer], and I'll give...