Monday, April 12, 2010

World Bank Intruding Households in Usino Bundi District in Madang-PNG

The World Bank is conducting a survey for the Usino Bundi area in Madang Province. Usino Bundi is one of the districts in PNG chosen for this household survey. 160 households will be sampled in this survey. The details of the purpose of the survey is not known, however based on the feedback from someone who was interviewed said they asked him questions like; Do you have mattresses for sleeping, do you have a Coleman Lamp (not small hurricane lamps), do you have a gun etc. That sounds like a socio-economic survey for some poverty eradication programs.

What is the point by intruding people’s privacy about the sleeping gears and household utensils?

First of all it is culturally unacceptable in a Melanesian setting to discuss the details of one’s household features to others and strangers.
Secondly, World Bank did not include in their questionnaires questions like, do you have a cocoa fementary, or how many standing cocoa tree do you have, or do you raise pigs and fouls etc. The point is that, people many not have mattress or Coleman lamps, but have cocoa fementaries, have cocoa trees, and raise pigs and fouls. These are important economic features that cannot be overlooked or left out in any surveys by any institutions doing such surveys.

The World Bank is again not sensitive in dealing with questions that maybe offending to a Melanesian (even if it straight forward to a westerner). And the fact the survey does not reflect some of the key economic features highlighted above would again provide a false data which will result in a faulty analysis and misleading recommendation and therefore whatever programs they dispatched will be misleading.

Lest we forget, what does World Bank got to show in its interactions in countries in Africa and other parts of the world? Its seems some of these places were better of before the interventions of the World Bank. In fact, World Bank is owned and controlled by the Worlds Leading Capitalists, where social services is not found in their equation, however, they have an "Unquenchable lust" for Profits.

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