wfn.org | PAPUA NEW GUINEA: WORST DROUGHT IN DECADES

[Audrey Whitefield <a.whitefield@quest.org.uk>]

Sept. 26, 1997
ANGLICAN COMMUNION NEWS SERVICE
Canon Jim Rosenthal, Director of Communications
Anglican Communion Office
London, England

[97.9.4.4]

PAPUA NEW GUINEA: WORST DROUGHT IN DECADES

(Anglican Board of Mission, Australia) Papua New Guinea's worst drought
in decades has prompted the Anglican Board of Mission in Australia to
launch an emergency relief fund.

Lucy Palmer, a PNG based journalist, writes that the gardens  have
withered, the earth is scorched and the weak and elderly are starting to
die. "In another month thousands of our closest neighbours could be
facing their worst famine this century," she writes.

Missionaries working in PNG have told of lost crops, bushfires, water
shortages and a growing hunger in a nation where most people depend on
subsistence farming to survive.

Bishop Michael Hough from New Britain said that PNG faces "a looming
tragedy". Many Highlands communities are moving down from the mountains
in search of water, food and relief from severe frosts and fires. "This
creates all kinds of health problems for the bigger towns in the area,
and it also has a major effect on food production," the Bishop
explained.

"People no longer have the backup gardens on which they used to be able
to rely for food.  There has just not been enough water to plant new
gardens successfully, and so down the track a bit there is going to be
an even more severe food shortage."

In East New Britain and New Ireland the water shortage has already
reached the crisis stage, and water is being shipped in to provide basic
needs. Mountain streams are drying up, Bishop Hough said, and people are
dying from stomach ailments.

"Every time something manages to grow it is swept away in another fire.
And everyone here knows that as soon as the rains do come, all the soil
will be washed down and those hills ruined as gardens and hunting areas.

"Multiply that across the country and you have some idea of the tragedy
that is looming."

The effects of drought, fires and frosts on the Highlands are starvation
and sickness caused by contaminated water supplies.  The Highlands also
provides food for the whole country and all the communities depend on
mountain streams for their water supply.

People are asked to remember PNG in their prayers and for help in
providing relief through the ABM Drought Relief Appeal. Donations are
being gratefully received by the ABM.