Owers Corner: The Road to Nowhere – 80 years on!
If ever there was a time for PNG to reclaim ownership of their Kokoda Trail from Australian aid-funded officials, it is now!
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Category: KOKODA INITIATIVE
Kokoda: A Tale of Bureaucratic Woe 80 Years On!
Trekker numbers have declined by 46% under their watch. This translates into a cumulative loss of K46 million for the subsistence villages across the Trail in foregone wages, campsite fees and local purchases – and these are the people we have spent more than K150 million trying to help!
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‘Foreign Interference’ Concerns re Proposed DFAT ‘Kokoda Track Management Authority’ for PNG
Papua New Guinea’s pristine, rugged, and remote environment is managed by their Conservation...
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Database Evaluation of the Kokoda Tourism Industry: 2003-2019
Official data, based on the number of Trek Permits issued by the Kokoda Track (Special Purpose) Authority (KTA), reveals that villagers across the Kokoda Trail have suffered a cumulative loss of K49.7 million in foregone income opportunities since the DFAT-Kokoda Initiative assumed responsibility for its management in 2009. A Kokoda Livelihoods Study by Pacific Islands Projects revealed the DFAT-Kokoda Initiative allocates just 1% of their budget to ‘income generating projects’ for villagers across the Trail.
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The Kokoda Trail: Chronology of Mismanagement: 2009-2019
Under Australian management since 2009 trekker numbers have declined by 42% resulting in a direct annual loss of $1.2 million (K3.1 million) for village communities across the Trail.
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Owers Corner: Neglected Gateway to the Kokoda Trail
For reasons known only to Australian Aid-funded officials Owers Corner doesn’t rate, and the local community doesn’t matter!
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Kokoda: The enemy within!
The discovery of a $3 billion gold and copper deposit on the southern slopes of the Trail provided the ‘emergency’ they needed to derail the mining approval, compensate landowners, and offer to ‘manage’ the Trail on their behalf.
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Apology to Kokoda Trail Villagers
‘Olgeta,
‘We met 31 years ago when you welcomed me into your villages on my first trek with Alex Rama in 1991. At the time you told me that few people trekked across the Trail – less than 100 each year – and you only made a few kina selling your vegetables at markets. . . .
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Kokoda Guides and Porters betrayed by the KTOA and their own KTA
The Australian KTOA has fought a tenacious campaign to deny their PNG guides and porters their workers’ rights – as a result the poor buggers are set to be shamelessly exploited for another year i.e. overloaded, underpaid and poorly equipped!
Read MoreSHAMELESS Hijack of Kokoda Trek PERMIT Fees!
More than $5 million has been hijacked by unaccountable Australian and PNG Government bureaucrats over the past decade. This money had been paid in good faith by Kokoda trekkers to meet their basic needs in the form of adequate campsites and a safe trail. The fees were also meant to provide for shared community benefits for villagers along the trail.
Read MoreOWERS CORNER: How to convert a memorial junkyard into PNGs No 1 Tourism Asset
Air Niugini’s Paradise magazine describes a visit to Ower’s Corner, where ‘the road becomes a footpath that connects the start of the Kokoda Trail . . . just an hour and a half from downtown Port Moresby’.Visitors who make the...
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‘Yes Minister’ alive on Kokoda
The Review of the Kokoda Track Authority (KTA) ordered by PNG Prime Minister, Peter O’Neill, is a disappointing academic desk-top study which recommends more of the same under a different name.
Prime Minister O’Neill ordered the review after the collapse of the management system put in place by the Australian Government in 2009.
Despite spending more than $60 million since then Kokoda trekker numbers have declined by 43 per cent; there is not a single management protocol in place; not one of the five key strategies or 33 objectives established by Australian managers for the period 2012-2015 was achieved; and there is still no master plan to protect and interpret our shared wartime history of the Kokoda campaign.
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