He said that they believed that more than 10,000 round or unmilled logs are currently stocked at a former slipway at Palekula.
The land owner said forestry department failed to measure the logs after they have cut down by the Chinese company for transportation to Palekula where they are stocked.
He said to know the price of a log the department has to measure it to evaluate the price but so far nothing has been done.
“Heaps of logs are currently stocked at Palekula and to remove them to take their measurement, it will take more than a month. This is the problem of the company and the department to short it out. For us the land owner we just want the payment of our trees,” said the land owner.
He said under the agreement signed between them, the Chinese company and the department, it was agreed to pay 2500 vatu per cubic metre.
With the nation's growing dependence on a Pacific Islander workforce, especially in regional areas, attention is shifting towards improving worker welfare and wellbeing.
He said Pacific Island workers often lived with strangers in sharehouse accommodation and had to navigate expense deductions as well as their obligations to send money to their families back home.
But due to the housing crisis and the need still to negotiate with the states about funding the education of the workers' children, he believes settling worker families in Australia has logistical challenges.
Labour hire companies then established links to agents to recruit workers en masse from Kiribati, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Fiji and Timor-Leste.
Mr MacRaild said understanding fair work conditions and expense deductions for airfares, rent and transport, taxation and superannuation, had left many workers vulnerable to exploitation over the past decade.
Mr MacRaild said a disciplined worker working overtime could generate a life-changing $20,000 a season, which could pay for school fees, vehicles, and home renovations and repairs to cyclone-damaged homes.
He said living standards were improving beyond anything foreign aid had been able to achieve.
But Mr MacRaild said the the movement of workers to Australia had led to an exodus of young people that was creating social upheaval in participating island nations.
"Many of these people have come leaving their children at home with extended family for months, even years on end," he said.
"The way in which the government got around the need to have compensation agreements in place before the issue of a special mining lease was to pass a piece of legislation, which basically said, 'look, the existing compensation agreements before the closure of the mine will allow us to continue in the interim, while New compensation agreements are relocated'."
A Papua New Guinea academic, who grew up in Porgera in the early years of the mine, Andrew Anton Mako, has called for structures to be put in place to ensure returns from the re-opened mine are not wasted.
The Australian National University staffer has written about what he calls the blessings and the curse the mine brought back in the 1990s.
He said with a bigger stake he hopes the community doesn't squander the money. "In the past it was only 2.5 percent of the mine equity stake," Mako said.
"Now the landowners have been given ten percent, free carry, by the government. So, it will be a lot of money. It is estimated around 25 billion kina. That's a lot of money for the next 20 years.
"So even though the proceeds will increase, the main issue is in the governance, the use of that money, whether it will be used productively to improve the lives of the people or whether it will be used mostly on consumption."
Mako also wants some focus on what happens when the mine stops producing in 20 years or so.
I know that Misskey/Glitch-soc reactions become likes on Mastodon servers. Anyone familiar with Misskey/Firefish can tell me what happens to a mastodon star when it federates? Does it becomes a generic :iine: reaction?
'We want payment for our trees': Landowners (www.dailypost.vu)
Five Santo land owners have asked a Chinese company of the Vanuatu Forest Industry Limited and the Department of Forestry the payment of their trees.
Seasonal workers and their Australian dollars are changing the Pacific. But at what cost? (www.abc.net.au)
With the nation's growing dependence on a Pacific Islander workforce, especially in regional areas, attention is shifting towards improving worker welfare and wellbeing.
PNG's Porgera set to re-open Friday (www.rnz.co.nz)
The long-awaited re-opening of the Porgera gold mine in Papua New Guinea's Enga Province is set to happen on Friday.