Source: Radio New Zealand
Shattered homes: community leaders at Paga Hill settlement discuss their response to police attempts to evict them. RNZ / Johnny Blades
A Papua New Guinean anthropologist has warned that a campaign by authorities to remove communities from informal settlements in Port Moresby will not solve growing social problems in PNG’s capital.
The government is determined to end the role of settlements as what Prime Minister James Marape decsribes as “breeding grounds for terror” as part of its law and order reforms, but recent evictions have run into problems.
Almost half of Port Moresby’s estimated population of around 500,000 live in settlements, often without legal title or access to basic services. Some of the settlements have become notorious as crime hotspots.
However, in late January, police moved into the settlement at 2-Mile, sparking clashes with residents that resulted in two deaths and numerous injuries.
Police then moved to evict another settlement at 4-Mile, but this met with a legal challenge which led to the National Court placing a stay order on the eviction.
While the campaign is essentially paused, Marape has said that his government would soon announce a permanent plan to replace unplanned settlements with properly titled residential allotments.
He also apologised to residents affected by the evictions, in recognition that many law-abiding and hard working families have made settlements their home over the years.
Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat
Urban drift
Previous attempts at evicting settlement communities did not exactly lay a template for the success of what authorities are trying to do in 2026.
In numerous cases, homes were destroyed or razed to the ground, people were left homeless and then simply moved to other areas of vacant land or ended up living with wantoks in other parts of Morebsy.
A PNG anthropologist who has done extensive work on settlements, Fiona Hukula, noted that settlements are long-established communities, stretching back decades.
“Essentially, people came to work in the towns and the cities, like in Port Moresby, and so where there was low cost housing, or where people weren’t able to afford housing, they started living in settlements, and some of the settlements on the outskirts, there’s stories that they made some kind of connection and deals with the local landowners.”
Dr Hukula said over the decades, migration to the towns and cities had grown significantly, but the available housing had not kept pace.
Water services at a settlement.
“People are just now coming into the city, really, to access better services, health and education. Some Papua New Guineans are coming to the city to escape various forms of conflict and violence.
“And this is now where we’ve seen just an influx of people coming into the city, and obviously there’s nowhere to live, and they live in settlements, and many of Moresby settlements are populated by families who have been there for several generations.”
‘Difficult thing I have to do’
Many of Moresby’s settlements are now populated by families who have been there for several generations. Removing people from these communities is a complex challenge.
“An eviction is not going to solve the problem, because people will just go and find somewhere else to stay (in Moresby), especially if they’re generational families who have lived in these settlements, who don’t necessarily have the ties back to their rural villages and their connections to their people in their village,” Dr Hukula said.
Adding to the complexities of the eviction drive are social connections forged in the National Capital District (NCD) over the years.
The head of the NCD Police Command Metropolitan Superintendent Warrick Simitab admitted that for him personally, leading the eviction exercises such as at 2-Mile had not been easy.
“It’s been difficult, because I grew up here. I grew up in NCD. For example in 2-Mile. Most of my classmates that I went to school together with, they live there. So for me personally, it’s a difficult thing that I have to do,” he told RNZ Pacific.
Papua New Guinea police RNZ / Johnny Blades
Simitab would not be drawn on when the evictions would start up again, saying things were paused while political leaders decide next steps.
Criminal hotspot
The local MP for Moresby South Justin Tkatchenko said the 2-Mile settlement had become a notorious criminal hotspot, and that the people of the city have had enough of it.
“Hold ups nearly every night and every day, women have been raped, attacked, citizens have been held up, cars stolen, injured, abused for nearly 20 years,” he said.
Things came to a head when police were shot at and those living in 2-Mile refused an ultimatum given by police to hand over the criminals, he explained.
Tkatchenko said the government was steadily working on resettling settlers with proper, legal allocations of land to live on.
“We have already allocated land and sub-divided that land for over 400 families in the 2-Mile Hill area and other areas. Some have already been resettled and moved, and others will follow suit,” the MP said.
Rainbow settlement in Port moresby, Papua New Guinea, where West Papuan refugees have squatted for years. RNZI / Johnny Blades
Dr Hukula acknowledged that crime linked to some settlements was an issue that the general population keenly wanted addressed.
But she said persisting with displacing communities from other settlements would not address the underlying cause of the problem.
“It is a ticking time bomb. It’s going to be like this, where there’s evictions and then people move. And the thing is that the cycle of violence continues, and that’s what we’re trying to address here, the crime.”
The anthropologist stressed that “not everybody in settlements are criminals”, saying the people who lived in settlements were often working people, “people who are doing the menial jobs in the offices, the office cleaners, the people who are drivers, all of these kinds of people also live in settlements, and so when they’re being kicked out, there are people who can’t go to work, children who can’t go to school”.
Dr Hukula has researched and written about how settlement communities have developed informal systems of settling disputes or addressing law and order problems such as through local komiti groups or village courts.
These provided a way in which the communities could maintain order and general respect between their people. But “because the settlements have just exploded now it’s not like necessarily everybody comes from the same area or the same province” she said, making it harder to maintain a social balance.
Looters run amok in shops amid a state of unrest in Port Moresby on 10 January, 2024. AFP / Andrew Kutan
In Dr Hukula’s view, “the village courts and the community leaders still play an extremely important role in being that bridge” between the authorities and the settlement community, and should be supported to play that role.
She said one of the other main things the government could do to help the situation was “to make sure that there’s affordable housing for all levels, all kinds of Papua New Guineans”.
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand