Employers offered
p. 30 · Read in the full issue
$80,000 a year to employ more locals
The New Guinea Administra tion is giving private business
men an admonitory shakeup—by
offering them $BO,OOO a year to train native businessmen.
New Guinea’s Ministerial Member for Labour, Mr. Toua Kapena, an nounced the scheme in Parliament— and in the lobbies, government mem bers were telling businessmen that if they did not take the scheme seri ously, they would have themselves to blame if frustrated local people began thinking of expropriation.
At the Papua-New Guinea Week seminar in Sydney last month, a pro minent Tolai, Mr. John Kaputin, said the same thing publicly. And one of New Guinea’s more hard-headed con servatives, Mr. Sinake Giregire, was quick to go on record “that most New Guinean’s do not think the way Kaputin does.”
However, many of the territory’s European businessmen are now look ing at the potential danger of too much commerce and industry remain ing too long in European and Chinese hands.
The government’s $BO,OOO a year for businessmen is for its Indigenous Training Incentive Scheme, the result of two years of world-wide research.
The government looked at the idea of tax rebates for training, but decided the $BO,OOO subsidy would work and look better.
The government will pay the money to approved employers of native people—and in the long term, help these same employers to reduce their payroll.
Native people receive considerably lower wages than Europeans in most fields, yet many big firms are still re cruiting from Australia men for jobs that, with a little training, might soon be handled by local people.
The new scheme to train local people may in turn create a genuine native middle-class of business and competent warehousemen and counter clerks.
The $BO,OOO will be turned out to approved employers in subsidies for vocational training, tool-kits for em ployees—in fact, everything from as sisted leave fares to subsidised accom modation.
And now, with talk of expropriation in the air, many of the territory’s European businessmen are beginning to take notice.