“The ITF, along­side the Mari­time Inter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion, is call­ing on the Min­is­ter of Trans­port, Hon. Wes­ley Nukun­dj, to inter­vene and urgently con­vene a meet­ing of stake­hold­ers – includ­ing uni­on and landown­er rep­res­ent­at­ives – to find a solu­tion to the cur­rent crisis,” Crum­lin said.

Over the past month, embattled glob­al port oper­at­or ICTSI has been the tar­get of inter­na­tion­al con­dem­na­tion over emer­ging pat­terns of labour viol­a­tions their net­work, poor safety stand­ards, and insuf­fi­cient mana­geri­al over­sight to ensure pro­duct­ive indus­tri­al rela­tions, and com­pli­ance with loc­al laws and inter­na­tion­al labour con­ven­tions.

“The decision to award con­tracts at PNG’s two biggest ports to ICTSI will have a pro­found impact. The Pap­ua New Guinea Mari­time and Trans­port Work­ers Uni­on, an affil­i­ate of the ITF, says that more than 1,000 jobs will be lost at the ports and in asso­ci­ated indus­tries due to the con­tracts awar­ded to ICTSI.

“The num­ber of fam­ily and com­munity mem­bers who rely on those jobs num­bers is in the thou­sands. We believe ICTSI intends to replace work­ers with a mix­ture of cas­u­al, out­sourced labour and Filipino work­ers under the guise of ment­ors. This is noth­ing short of a dis­grace.”

Joe Fleet­wood, Gen­er­al Sec­ret­ary of the Mari­time Uni­on of New Zea­l­and, also called on the Gov­ern­ment of PNG to act: “The PNG gov­ern­ment must put its work­ers’ interests first, and pro­tect the jobs of its people. We stand ready to con­tin­ue our sup­port for the PNG work­ers and landown­ers in their just fight.”

There are sig­ni­fic­ant con­cerns about how the entry of ICTSI into the PNG port sec­tor will impact on landown­er groups, the county’s domest­ic coastal ship­ping net­work and loc­al com­munit­ies. The 25-year con­tract will see landown­ers lose their share­hold­ing, without any com­pens­a­tion.

“Both the Gov­ern­ment of PNG and ICTSI need to answer some ser­i­ous, unanswered ques­tions. The recog­ni­tion of landown­ers’ cul­tur­al and his­tor­ic con­nec­tion with their land, com­pens­a­tion for their invest­ment in the ports, and their ongo­ing par­ti­cip­a­tion in the port oper­a­tions remain a mys­tery. And the impact of ICTSI’s entry on the viab­il­ity of PNG’s domest­ic coastal ship­ping net­work and implic­a­tions that ICTSI’s pred­at­ory pri­cing struc­tures will have on the costs of goods in the coun­try need to be addressed,” added Crum­lin.

The protests were organ­ised by the ITF and MIF, and affil­i­ates the Mari­time Uni­on of Aus­tralia (MUA) and the Mari­time Uni­on of New Zea­l­and (MUNZ).