Hired guns secure their fortune in PNG – Hot spot closer to home

I can understand writing about the potential economic issues facing the country and the security issues we have in PNG, but sampela taim ol journalist laik lo putim extra gris lo stori blong ol!!

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Source: Sunday Mail (QLD), Edition 2 – State – Main     SUN 23 MAY 2010

By: Gavin King: kingg@qnp.newsltd.com.au

THEY have risked their lives on the world’s most dangerous battlefields, raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars working in top-secret roles for private security firms in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now Australian ex-soldiers and hired guns are facing danger closer to home, taking up lucrative offers to provide personal security for expat workers in the violent slum cities of Papua New Guinea.

With the troubled nation’s multi-billion-dollar resources boom fuelling the gap between rich and poor, foreign workers are increasingly being targeted in car-jackings, robberies and home invasions. Queensland man John Ramshaw, 61, is fighting for his life in a Port Moresby hospital after being shot in the back during a robbery at his workplace on May 13.

Friend Wolfgang Bandisch told The Sunday Mail that expats face daily threats of random violence, with another friend shot at and injured in an attempted car-jacking when she stopped at a roundabout last month. Resources companies such as Exxon Mobil and Oil Search are turning to private security consultants with war-zone experience, offering exorbitant salary packages to shadow and protect executive workers and their families. Bidding wars between consultant companies and mining giants looking for top security experts can reach more than $300,000, plus accommodation, a vehicle and other perks.

Many Queensland security consultants hired to protect executives and projects on a range of gold and copper mines are on fly-in, fly-out contracts, a luxury their work in far-flung international war zones never allowed. But the biggest boon for private security will be the liquefied natural gas sector, estimated to be worth between $50 billion and $130 billion.

After four years of private security contracts in Iraq, Brisbane’s James Pomare now works as a security consultant based in Port Moresby. “There are parts of Papua New Guinea you just don’t go because they are too dangerous,” Mr Pomare said.

“Most of the crime there is opportunistic – you really can’t plan for it – which I guess is similar to the work we had to do in Iraq because you just don’t know what’s going to happen from one minute to the next.

“We’re involved in personal security and special operations, particularly when there are disputes between landowners in the more remote areas that some of these projects are based.” Executive Talent International’s Peter Conlon, who specialises in Papua New Guinea, said he was fielding hundreds of applications for security positions.

One of his recruits was last year shot three times in a brazen robbery while guarding a shipment of gold. “It takes a certain type of person to work in these types of security roles, people who just don’t like the mundanities of normal life,” he said.

“There are a lot of good operators sick of working in the sandpit of Afghanistan and Iraq, looking for work closer to home,” he said. “I had a guy in a senior security role being paid $150,000 when he first started, then he was offered $250,000 by another contractor and ended up taking a job with Exxon for $300,000. “The tax rate there is high, but you’re getting your accommodation and car and other things paid for, plus you get the benefits of being so close to home and instead of being surrounded by dust you’re living in a fairly spectacular location. After nearly three decades there, Mr Bandisch describes Papua New Guinea as a war zone. “You are paid well because of the incredible risk to your safety,” he said.

Figures obtained by The Sunday Mail show more than 9700 Australians applied for visas to Papua New Guinea last year, up from 8500 in 2007. Of those, 4100 were for business purposes, the fastest-growing category issued by the Consulate General of Papua New Guinea.

University of Queensland economics associate professor John Asafu-Adjaye, who lived in Papua New Guinea for several years, believes crime will escalate as the government continues to misuse resource revenues and fails to improve living conditions.

“It’s an incredibly tricky situation facing the PNG Government and, in turn, the Australian Government,” he said.

Gavin King | North Queensland bureau – The Sunday Mail

Animal Audio LIVE @ Club Junction

Darkness of Neon Lights

Source: Scott Waide

In 1975, Papua New Guinea’s Constitutional planning committee foresaw the problems of the western form of economic development. The following video contains exact quotes from their deliberations on the year of Independence.

BSP’s SMS Top Up Service – a step closer to mobile wallets

I did a post last year on BSP’s SMS Banking, basically discussing their abilities to check account balances. They have also rolled out services to top up your Digicel phones from their ATM’s and now they’ve introduced the service to top up your Digicel phone from your bank account via your mobile phone.

There’s allot of convenience in that, I know that it will not immediately cut down on the huge queues at the branches, but it could be the first baby steps towards mobile wallets. Data Nets have been working on something and it was claimed that ‘…The innovation is targeted at the rural majority of Papua New Guineans who do not have bank accounts. You can pay your PMV fare, buy your kerosene or even food in the trade store using your phone…’

However from what I read earlier about Data Nets system, it sounds like their service will have no interaction with the banks in the early stages. So I’m guessing that they are banking on building up subscribers in their closed system before they go to BSP for example.

So looks like both companies are after the same thing although coming to it from different angles. Perhaps they may be in discussions but I think there’s enough space in the market for all players to start creating a uniform mobile payment system that all service providers and vendors can use so that we can have uniformity and more importantly in the future it will make it easier to regulate since we are dealing with people’s money here.

But nice one BSP, hope to be able to buy more using my mobile in future.

Political Advertising

 

It’s a funny place we live in when NGO’s take out paid advertising on billboards on the road to a country’s Parliament House.

Rumours of an airline merger

Author: Ilya Gridneff for AAP

HONIARA, Aug 18 AAP – There are concerns in Papua New Guinea that Qantas flights to Port Moresby are threatening the survival of PNG’s second biggest carrier Airlines PNG (APNG).

The Australian airline entered into the PNG market in July hoping to capitalise on the country’s $16 billion ExxonMobil-led Liquefied Natural Gas project.

A subsequent price war resulted in flights to Port Moresby from Cairns being cheaper than to Sydney. But since the Qantas entry, APNG has reduced its once daily Cairns-Port Moresby run to twice a week. Qantas, which has a codeshare agreement with state-owned national airline Air Niugini on flights to Sydney and Brisbane, has declined to comment on how this has affected APNG.

But a government letter, sighted by AAP, says “(There is) grave concern about the recent entry of Qantas into the Cairns-Port Moresby route. “The Qantas entry in its own right was forcing both national carriers out of the market and there could be removal of competition and higher prices as a result”. Meanwhile, several government sources have told AAP that APNG is seeking a merger with Air Niugini.

They said APNG and other private investors were lobbying to get a merger proposal through cabinet. APNG CEO Geoff Toomey, a former Air New Zealand CEO and before that Qantas deputy CEO and chief financial officer, declined to comment.
APNG spokeswoman Danae Jones did not deny the merger push but said the airline would not talk about “speculation and rumour”.
“Significant improvement in financial performance is expected for 2010,” she said.

However, Air Niugini CEO Wasantha Kumarasiri said a merger was not under consideration. “(Prime Minister Michael Somare) and our minister (Public Enterprises Minister Arthur Somare) have assured us they are dedicated to Air Niugini,” he said. A spokesman from the Prime Minister’s Office also played down the merger talk. “We hope sense will prevail,” he said.

The merger rumour comes in the same month APNG marked a year since one of its planes crashed en route to Kokoda, killing all 13 people on board, including nine Australian Kokoda trekkers.

In 2008, the Cairns-based Wild family sold a 50 per cent stake in APNG through a public float on the Port Moresby stock exchange for an estimated 100 million kina ($A40 million). John Wild remains the largest APNG shareholder with 47 per cent while his son, APNG chairman, Simon Wild, is also managing director of Wild family-owned Queensland-based regional airline Sky Trans.

Since the float APNG shares have dropped from one kina (40c) to 63 toea (25c). In the APNG 2009 annual report Mr Wild blamed the company’s 24.6 million kina ($A9.8 million) loss on the global economic downturn, the Kokoda crash and even the Icelandic volcanic eruption that grounded planes in the northern hemisphere. 

For the same period Air Niugini declared a profit of 68 million kina ($A27.2 million).