It's up the workers

workers

From a Port Moresby correspondent Despite the dire predictions of

economic chaos, Papua-New

Guinea’s 70,000 plantation and

other rural workers are to get more pay.

From January 1, their weekly wage —in cash, accommodation, food and clothing—goes up from $4.83 to $5.33 ... a minimum rate rise of 50 cents a week, and the first since 1965.

The extra 50 cents was authorised by the P-NG Administration and the Administrator’s Executive Council to “placate” the rural workforce while the Administration tries to find out if the wage should go any higher.

An independent Board of Inquiry into Rural Wages had recommended a much steeper rise—a 32 per cent, hike, lifting the minimum rate weekly wage from $4.83 in cash, clothing, food and housing to $6.40 all in cash.

The board, headed by Professor

Donald Cochrane, Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Politics at Monash University, Victoria, included two New Guineans to give the recom mendations local “flavour”.

The board was not at all kind about P-NG’s plantation management and workers’ productivity. It urged training at all levels to make the Territory’s crucially important primary export industries “get with the times”.

For months, planters and some parliamentarians have been warning that it would not be a good thing for the board to recommend any in crease in rural wages. Production costs, they said, were (especially with rubber) almost equal to sale prices, and plantation affluence was very much a thing of the past.

At the height of the public debate on the question there were heated threats of plantation riots and street marches if the minimum rural wage was not increased. One politician wanted $lO weekly for plantation workers, many of whom are primi tive, unskilled men straight out of their bush villages. A big rise in rural wages would have spiralled right up through the rest of the private and public service economy, adding hundreds of thousands of dollars to the public payroll.

It is against this climate that Pro fessor Cochrane’s Board of Inquiry has recommended the 32 per cent, pay rise.

A feature of the recommendations is the proposed phasing out over three years of what many regard as the paternalistic cash-and-kind payments of cash, food, housing and clothing —originally a Government-enforced system designed to make sure (despite card-playing and trade stores) that labourers not used to handling cash would at least be housed and fed.

Cash-and-kind payments in the Public Service were largely removed in 1965 and soon, P-NG’s entire labour force of nearly 200,000 will be on a full cash wage.

Ministerial Member of Parliament for Labour, Mr. Toua Kapena, told the House of Assembly in November that the Administration and the Executive Council needed more time to study the board’s recommenda tions, especially the impact on the very marginal tea and rubber in dustries, but meanwhile the interim increase would be granted.

Professor Cochrane’s inquiry went well beyond wages alone—housing and leisure conditions on the planta tions came in for special attention, with recommendations for more careful planning of accommodation, with sports facilities, social clubs, adult education, hobbies.