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The Forum > Article Comments > Army of well-paid advisers keep Pacific poor > Comments

Army of well-paid advisers keep Pacific poor : Comments

By Helen Hughes, published 24/2/2010

Taxpayers should be concerned that egregiously high salaries are paid to aid-funded advisers in the Pacific region.

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Hasbeen, you are spot on about PNG, at least where I grew up in the Bismark Archipelago. That's why Chinese trade stores thrive and without them, the people have no cultural basis to run a business.

Their politics is a joke, I remember Ms Abija on the hustings near Port Moresby, promising everyone who voted for her a fridge. It now has come down to rampant corruption.

I feel so sorry for the people I grew up with now deprived of a caring and benevelent country like Australia who was supplying services and the basis of civilisation. Roads, law and order, electricity, schools and employment.

I don't know what partof PNG you grew up in Examinator, you must have been too young or too insulated to realise the good the Australians did. The expats who came and went had no intention of exploiting anyone and I resent the implication you make.

Do you really think they were not treated fairly? What an incredibly immature and pompus attitude to people who went there to nation build and were undermined by fools like Gough Whitlam.

Did you catch that in my earlier post - that should have been the giveaway that it was obvious it was administered by Australia, but in your haste to chide you missed it, typical of your style.

Here it is again, read carefully this time "Whitlam did a whistle stop tour of PNG before he was elected and became an instant expert, and promised immediate independence if elected."

"immediate independence", I'll translate for you, we were governing!

Yes they need highly paid advisers all over the pacific for the reason they are not capable of running their own affairs because of cultural primitiveness - a sad state, but as we all knew in PNG, it would come to this because they were not ready for independence in a modern, connected world.
Posted by Amicus, Thursday, 25 February 2010 8:02:14 AM
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I get fed up with reading about the huge amounts that expats earn in PNG without context. Helen neglects to mention the astronomical costs of living in PNG. Four years ago, you could rent a 2-3 bedroom unit in a reasonably safe neighbourhood for about K1,500 (roughly $650) per week. When I left POM six months ago, the cost was K4,500 per week. The problem is lack of supply as land for development is held up in disputes for years. Then there is the high cost of purchasing and running a car over some of the worst roads you can imagine (a new tyre costs over K1,000 and they don't last long)- using local transport is problematic in the security environment not to mention that few vehicles providing public transport are roadworthy. Costs for water, electicity and food are high, as is health care, which is largely limited to GP services - if you need much more than that you need to go back to Australia.

Highly skilled locals aren't being crowded out, they don't want to work for the Govt which pays next to nothing. Those who have developed skills overseas get used a reasonable standard of living that you can't support on K30,000 a year. Consequently, they want a job as an adviser themselves or they go overseas. If aid supported the Govt budget to pay more to the public servants then in you'd need to weed out the people who are on the payroll but don't actually turn up. It's unlikely higher pay would filter through to those who actually do the hard work (largely women).

I agree there are good and bad advisers, some worth the money and some not, but while there may be a need to improve the process, it's not a given that the process is wrong. Getting rid of advisers is a two way street - if the recipient Govt provided a committed counterpart to work with, advisers would not be needed once the skills transfer was completed. Unfortunately the reality often falls short.
Posted by EXPNG, Monday, 1 March 2010 12:51:44 PM
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