Fruit Picking in Papua New Guinea

The issue of unemployment has been a reality in PNG for many years now.

After the Covid-19 pandemic one media outlet reported that two thousand people turned up at Stanley Hotel in Port Moresby for a walk-in interview, but only 100 were offered a position while 1900 went home frustrated.

Forty thousand students come out of school every year, with the majority ending up on the streets in our towns and cities and the villages with no hope of finding employment. There are few companies in Papua New Guinea to provide them any form of employment. 

Many Papua New Guineans are now banking their hopes on fruit picking in Australia, but the competition is tough. Other South Pacific Islands like Fiji and Vanuatu are also sending their people to do fruit picking in Australia as well. These other Pacific Islanders are being given preference due to their humble temperament, while Papua New Guineans are finding the going tough due to our aggressive behaviors.

Moreover, conmen and women have set up dubious recruitment schemes for fruit picking in Australia, only to rip-off gullible men and women of their hard-earned cash. Hundreds of Papua New Guineans have obtained passports and visas to do fruit picking in Australia, only to find out that the persons organizing the fruit picking recruitment schemes have disappeared with their hard-earned cash.

So the question that the government and people of Papua New Guinea should ask is this. Why don’t we develop our own fruit picking industry and employ our own people? Unemployment is going through the roof in this country, so why not develop a fruit picking industry in the country to reduce our unemployment problem?

It does not take genetic engineering or rocket science to develop a fruit picking industry in this country. We already have thousands of tropical fruits and nuts in this country to be developed into viable businesses that can provide employment for our people and reduce our high rate of unemployment.

We have pawpaw and apple mangoes rotting in the Markham Valley in Morobe Province, Rigo in the Central Province and Rabaul in the East New Britain Province every year. We have Canarium and Okari nut trees growing in natural forests around the country, where their nuts go to waste every year because they are not harvested for consumption or sale. We have exotic fruits like jackfruit, oranges, mandarin, Indian guava, grapes, avocado, durian and mangosteen growing around houses in our towns, cities and villages, where the fruits are going to waste every year.

Therefore, we already have a portfolio of native and exotic fruits and nuts we can use to develop a horticulture industry in this country.

What the government needs to do is to get the forestry and agriculture departments to shift some of their attention to the cultivation and management of fruits and nut trees. Horticulture is within the jurisdictions of these two departments. But forestry is concentrating all its effort in the logging industry while agriculture is concentrating all its efforts on a few crops like oil palm, copra, cocoa and vanilla. 

There is already interest in fruits and nuts around the country, but the people need scientific knowhow and government intervention to get a fruit and nut industry going in this country. Distribution of plant cultivars and expertise knowledge from within the departments of forestry and agriculture are essential if we want to develop a fruit and nut picking industry in this country.

Ngasuwapum Cooperative Society of Ngasuwapum village, Huon District, Morobe Province has started a small horticulture hub. The association has ventured into Indian guava cultivation and management, and two of our members have already planted 400 Indian guava fruit trees. Other members of the association have now jumped on the horticulture bandwagon, and by the end of 2023 more than 1000 Indian guava fruit trees were established in the village. The association has also gone into farming of jackfruit, mangoes, mangosteen, durian and dragon fruit; and tree planting for carbon trade is also promoted by the association.  

The association hopes that one day they will have a fruit and nut industry in the Morobe Province, where they can employ their own people to do fruit picking and solve some of the country’s unemployment problems.

The association also hopes to find markets within PNG and abroad so that they can sell their produce and improve their standard of living; the association’s targeted overseas market is Asia, especially China.

As the saying goes, “If there is a will, there is a way”. Therefore, the association has heeded that saying by taking a small step in the fruit and nut industry. But government intervention is needed to fast-track things so that the association can increase production and assist in solving the unemployment crisis plaguing Papua New Guinea right now.