Filipinos
p. 28 · Read in the full issue
Png’S Angry
Fight Back
Prom a Port Moresby correspondent
Angry Filipino migrants in Papua New Guinea are threatening to advise their countrymen back home to ignore any offers of employment from the PNG Government.
PNG’s experiment in bringing in trained Filipinos is still coming under attack from the outspoken general secretary of the public service asso-| ciation, Mr Jacob Lemeki.
Last month (PIM, Oct, p 9) Mr Lemeki accused the Filipinos of being “third-rate public servants who couldn’t get a job in their own country”. He accused them of com ing to PNG and of taking over jobs, at higher pay, that New Guineans should be doing.
The Philippines Consul-General in PNG, Mr Ruben Mendoza, smoothed over the situation in talks with Mr Lemeki, but there was more trouble again in late September.
In newspaper correspondence Mr Lemeki renewed his attacks on the Filipinos, accusing them of low stan dards in their work and of not being prepared to work in remote areas.
In Rabaul a spokesman for the Filipino migrants, Mr Antonio Casi miro, said that unless Mr Lemeki’s association showed immediate signs that it was changing its attitude there would be a strong reaction. He said he would not hesitate to tell Filipinos in their own country not to answer calls for employment in PNG. He said there were now more than 300 Filipinos working in PNG under the new scheme, and they could dis courage the arrival of any more.
He called Mr Lemeki’s statements “emotional, full of hate, and sense less”.
He said that Mr Lemeki was also effectively criticising his own coun try’s selection team by suggesting it had employed incompetent people.
He said “none of us will accept in silence continuous insults like a water buffalo would accept a whip ping from its bad-tempered owner.
No one is doing the Filipinos a favour by employing them”. • Australia is playing a positive role in helping Fiji to build the Suva- Nadi highway. In its 1974-75 budget, Australia has provided for a loan of $1,815,000 to Fiji to help finance construction of the highway.