A Papuan family with one child who has a bloated stomach, a sure sign of malnutrition.
Pacific Scoop:
Report – By Walhamri Wahid.
Bintang Papua – TAPOL – The sight of shops, shopping malls, supermarkets and hotels everywhere in a city is no way to judge progress in Papua because all these are run by just a handful of people, the majority of whom are newcomers, while Papuans are becoming increasingly marginalised, doing their trade sitting on gunny sacks on the side of the road, with nothing more than candles to illuminate their wares. The influx of migrants is turning Papuans into nothing more that spectators.
There is surely no one who doesn’t visit the many shopping malls and supermarkets which have sprung up everywhere in Jayapura and other towns in Papua except for Papuans living in the interior who walk around barefoot. But have we ever asked ourselves, when seeing all these shops: ‘How many Papuans are working in these supermarkets?’ You could count them on the fingers of one hand.
Papuan people are still weighed down by poverty in a land that produces plenty of foreign currency for the nation’s revenue. In a paper presented by Septer Manufandu, executive secretary of the NGO Forum, titled ‘Papuan People’s Access to Public Services’, he said that of the 480,578 indigenous Papuan households, 81.52 per cent or around 391,767 households can be classified as poor.
In his paper, Manufandu said that Special Autonomy (OTSUS) which led to the division of the territory (into two provinces) in order to improve the provision of services to the public, has clearly not achieved its objective.
This hasty division took place at a time when many places were lacking the necessary infrastructure and facilities, some even without any government structure at all; it seems that officials are quite happy working in the district or provincial administrations
Take for instance the health sector: even though the governor of Papua issued Decision 6/2009 announcing that indigenous Papuans would get free medical care financed out of OTSUS funds, this is not working in practice because the medicines and other health needs are not available in the government hospitals which means that patients must buy all these things in pharmacies at prices which are not affordable.
All these health clinics have smart-looking buildings but services are very irregular and are not available daily, which raises questions about how the budget for health is being spent.
An analysis of the allocation to health in the provincial budget for 2009 shows that a high percentage was used for wages and allowances while the allocation for health was far below the 15 percent suggested by WHO.
The consequences of the inadequacy of funding for health is quite apparent from figures about health conditions from a survey in 2005 which revealed that the mortality rate among mothers and children was far too high, five years after OTSUS was introduced. Whereas in 2001 of the 51,460 babies born survived out of a total of 64,471 births, with 7,150 babies dying, NGO Foker estimates that 578 babies die each year out of a population in Papua of 2.6 million, the vast majority of whom live in the interior. [This would not appear to take account of the fact that an increasing percentage of people living in West Papua are non-Papuans.]
This situation is very much related to the behaviour of medical personnel who frequently abandon their posts even though their wages continue to be paid, simply because these people have lost sight of the purpose of their profession. According to Septer Manfandu,, no firm measures are taken against the people who abandon their posts. Generally speaking, all districts in Papua have the necessary infrastructure such as clinics for healthcare. There are primary schools and secondary schools everywhere but they are not functioning as they should.
NGO Forum has recommended that during the remaining years of OTSUS, there needs to be a fundamental reform of the bureaucracy, bearing in mind the spirit that inspired OTSUS, while the division of the province has led to local-based fanaticism and a failure to recruit people on the basis of their competence and capabilities. There is also an urgent need for reform of the budget because NGOs have discovered that so much of the money spent is going to paying the wages of officials rather than for public services and to budget allocations that conflict with the purposes of the OTSUS law.
Most important of all is for Papuans themselves to exercise control over the administration in the use of funds, so as to ensure that the money is spent for people’s basic needs and not for all kinds of unnecessary frivolous activities by officials.
Walhamri Wahid is a writer from West Papua who specialises in social advocacy reporting. This report was first published in www.bintangpapua.com and translated by TAPOL.