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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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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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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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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A ‘strategic Plan ‘developed by PNG DFAT officials for the management of the Kokoda Trail failed to achieve any the 5 strategies or 30 objectives it set out for 2012-2015. A massive fail!
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‘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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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 MoreMore 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 MoreAir 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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The Australian Kokoda Tour Operators Association (KTOA) is a small but shameless lobby group established to cash in on the Kokoda trekking industry and protect their business interests in PNG.
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Editor’s note: After publishing the Charlie Lynn article Losing Kokoda on May 14, we received a...
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The ‘blackbirding curse’ is as damaging to Papua New Guinea’s adventure tourism industry as the...
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