Experts say a million in extreme poverty in PNG

Updated May 15, 2009 15:48:10

More than 1 million people in Papua New Guinea live in extreme poverty according to latest assessments presented at a conference in Sydney this week. In the past 2 weeks, Papua New Guinea's Prime Minister, Sir Michael Somare, has been weathering a storm of controversy after he told an audience in Canberra that no-one in his country goes hungry. Yesterday politicians, public servants, community leaders and businesspeople from PNG gathered for a Lowy Insitute conference on the issue.

Presenter: Jemima Garrett
Speaker: Sarah Garrop, Highlands community leader; Dr Mike Bourke from the Australian National University; Sam Basil, Papua New Guinea MP

JEMIMA GARRETT: The Lowy Institute had planned its conference on extreme poverty in PNG long before Sir Michael's comments catapulted the issue into the newspapers. According to the United Nations, poverty is living on less than US$1 a day. The Australian Government's aid agency AusAid says that's life for 40 per cent of Papua New Guineans. Living in extreme poverty often means having no access to health care or education. Dr Mike Burke from the Australian National University told the conference more than 1 million Papua New Guineans or 18 per cent of the population live in extreme poverty.

DR MIKE BURKE: People in extreme poverty in Papua New Guinea, many of them live on less than 100 kina a year - in fact, virtually many of them live outside the cash economy. Most of the poorest people in PNG are the rural villagers. It's not the kids, those urchins that run around down near the waterfront in Port Moresby, the kids that dive between cars, sure they're poor but they're not the majority. They don't live on the coast. Few do, very few do. They don't live in the Central Highlands where the action is, they live between that. They live sometimes in the Highlands but on the edge of the Highlands. They live in the inland lowland areas and the worst area are those two areas. All of the worst places, every single list is in those two environments.

JEMIMA GARRETT: The conference heard extreme poverty can mean as many as 40 per cent of children dying before they turn 1 and 8 per cent to 10 per cent of women dying in childbirth. Early death is so common that in many of these communities there are no adults with grey hair. There was anger with Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare for not taking the issue seriously. Sarah Garrop, a community leader based in the PNG Highlands, says too many of PNG's leaders are not in touch with the grass roots.

SARAH GARROP: I think the right honourable Sir Michael Somare as our prime minister is comfortable, with the rest of the members of parliament, and therefore I think he wouldn't understand really the suffering of the majority of rural Papua New Guineans, particularly our social safety net system has sort of broken down many years ago.

JEMIMA GARRETT: Ms Garrop has many years experience working with rural communities. She says women are the poorest of the poor and the situation is getting worse.

SARAH GARROP: In terms of decision-making processes where women's voices are supposed to be heard and included women are just basically not present so how do development programs and plans get to be made if the rest of the community are excluded in terms of voices being heard and aspirations being seen and supported?