MADANG TRAVEL AND TOURISM INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION
March 31 2022
The Madang Travel and Tourism Industry Association (MTIA) and Chamber of Commerce held a public meeting at the Madang Resort on March 22 to discuss many of the problems that are affecting the image of Madang along with other matters related that are preventing Madang from moving ahead and developing its potential.
The Acting Chair of the MTIA, Sir Peter Barter, provided a long agenda item which had been collected from the tourism and private sector. In his opening of the meeting, Sir Peter stressed that whilst there were many problems, the prime purpose of the meeting was to recommend solutions that he hoped would be accepted by the various national and provincial leaders. The “blame game” should not and would not be discussed, Sir Peter said.
The importance of the various matters included in the agenda varied in importance: many of the recommendations could quickly be addressed, others would take some time but with the upcoming National Elections, it would provide some of the concerns affecting the development of Madang Township and Madang Province.
- Briefly, the matters discussed included “land grabbing” which was out of control. This relates to the acquisition of various titles not going through the correct procedures resulting in a great deal of concern by both residents and the traditional landowners, who themselves have largely remained unpaid for the township of Madang. One case, in particular, was Vabong Park where the Catholic Archdiocese wants to build a day high school to cater for the thousands of Grades 9-12 students who have been unable to be placed in the existing schools in Madang and the outskirts of Madang.Archbishop Aton Bal stressed his concern over the way their request was handled by the Lands Department and said the Archdiocese intended to challenge this in court. Of equal concern was land being sold by the traditional landowners to people from other provinces with complete disregard to future generations.
- The constant outages of power, water, internet need to be addressed, much of which is due to the lack of capacity of the town generators, which cannot meet the demand when the Yonki power is not available. Many of the hotels, educational institutions and businesses treat their standby power now as the prime power which is extremely costly. This is not a new problem, for many years despite promises being made the situation continues to get worse.
- PNG Ports need to remove all the wrecks from the Madang Harbour: Many have sunk already and it will take millions to have these wrecks removed. As more sink, they will become a navigational hazard. The old JANT Wharf is about to collapse into the harbor, which is tragic, when you consider the harbour is amongst the most naturally-beautiful harbors in PNG, if not the Pacific. PNG Ports have responded, stating they are unable to remove the wrecks until they have permission from their respective owner. Many belong to the Government, others belong to people who have since departed.The MTIA has since received a positive response from the PNG Port Service Management and it is expected a further visit will be made this week for officers to visit Madang to see what can be dne to remove the many reeks in the harbour.
- Special mention was made of the informal markets springing up all over the township which has resulted in the Madang Urban Local Level Government (MULLG) not allocating areas for the informal sector and encouraging them to use the markets which were generously funded by the Japanese Government and the National Fisheries Authority (NFA).
- Most provinces want a university like Divine Word University (DWU), yet in Madang, the Provincial Government all but ignores the existence of the university – which has grown to be one of the highest -egarded in PNG. This is evident in various open days, graduations, and special events when the absence of provincial and national members is noticeably absent.
- Safety of small boats: The community expressed concern over the number of overcrowded banana boats traveling long distances between Madang, Manus, Kavieng, Rabaul, Wewak, and the Ninigo Islands which have accounted for 30 per cent of the incidents where boats and people have gone missing in PNG. There, the Small Ships Act has not been introduced, which would help minimise the sea incidents by making it law for banana boats to have adequate buoyancy, water, drivers with basic skills on maintaining outboard motors, water, and some form of communication in the case of an emergency.
- The Town Dump is becoming a hazard to get vehicles to into dump and secondly a danger to drivers who are frequently held up by rascals. The MULLG is aware of this problem and is seeking assistance from the Madang Member for heavy equipment to keep the road open. One of the reasons the number of residents failing to pay for services, which has resulted in millions of plastic bags with rubbish hanging on fences and broken open by dogs who eat the rubbish and scatter the plastic bags in the town and waterways.