Why many New Guinea
pp. 59-61 · Read in the full issue
youngsters turn to crime
From DON BARRETT in Rabaul.
Papua-New Guinea is faced with an ever growing social prob lem: What to do with the thousands of children who do not go beyond primary level at school—children who are making up the hard core of a crime upsurge that is hitting the territory hard.
It’s not a new problem. It was debated by the first House of Assembly in 1964 and the then Administrator, Sir Donald Cleland, thought the matter serious enough to set up a special committee to look at possible solutions. Chairman of the committee was the present Administrator, Mr. Les Johnson!
This Youth Employment Committee made a number of recommendations and it sought to get interest in districts by the setting up of district committees, to include private enter- Prise.
But most of the work of the committee was stultified by departmental jealousy and a fear by some relatively senior public servants that their power might be usurped.
Through 1965 and 1966 when the committee was functioning it considered there were three or four areas where immediate action was needed.
By 1971 the whole of Papua-New Guinea needs immediate action.
The expansion of primary educa tion to remote areas has brought social upheavals. A primary school has become a sort of status symbol —there’s even a hint of cargo cultism in the pleas of some MHAs for a share for their electorate of the good things the Treasurer hands out.
And so ever increasing numbers of young people go to primary school fully believing that six years there will open any doors, When many of the children “drop out” at the age of 12, it would need a Solomon to know what to do with them, They become disaffected with the system that has brought them this far, then shut the door. They don’t want to return to normal village life; they don’t want to work too hard— and mostly don’t have too where there is ample food at home, or when they can drift to towns and sponge on wantoks.
Young men such as these are the
nuclei of gangs that raid transports labouring up steep pinches of New Guinea’s Highlands Highway that runs from Lae to Mt. Hagen in the Western Highlands. Bandits leap aboard the slow moving trucks and throw off cargo to waiting accom plices.
Recently villagers on one section of the highway threatened reprisal kill ings of at least two truckles for the deaths of two village men in a road accident. It was no idle threat and trucks moved in convoys for safety after the threat.
In Goroka, headquarters of the Eastern Highlands, an organised gang of Highlanders calling themselves the “Rascals” often beats up coastal men abroad alone at night in the town. (PIM, Mar., p. 35.) With its well organised breaking and entering gangs, Mt. Hagen prob ably has the fastest growing crime rate in the territory. And, say police, much of it is due to the young un employed roaming town at night.
Port Moresby and Lae have their share, too, but here much can be at tributed to “foreigners” who drift into town and fail to find employment. An inescapable fact is that many of these are Highlanders, who, through popu lation pressure, move from their home districts seeking employment.
Police crack down hard on offend ers when they are apprehended, but they can’t do anything about the root cause. The ball is fairly and squarely in the Administration’s court—in fact it’s been there since 1964.
Vocational Training Centres, once thought to provide a good measure of answer by giving simple technical or basic farming skills to boys not pro ceeding to high school, just can’t cope with the numbers.
So while politicians and public ser vants are busying themselves with wage and salary levels that an inde pendent Papua-New Guinea will find a burden beyond its capacity to bear, much of the youth of the country is degenerating into idle “won’t works”. • A New Guinea Highlander was gaoled for two months in Port Moresby in March for using obscene language to a switchboard operator in Port Moresby. Anoka Aha, 18, of Kainantu, Western Highlands, pleaded not guilty to making an obscene phone call to Mrs. Delly Malare, at Boroko Motors. Mrs.
Malare said she had been receiving the calls for a week. A Posts and Telegraphs technician testified that one call was traced to a Boroko address, where Aha worked as a domestic. Denying the offence, Aha said he had been raised on a mission and knew the law.