Challenges and Advice for Entrepreneurship in Melanesia

My wife runs similar SMEs especially Trade Stores, Poultry, etc that we’ve full stocked with K30-50k that were completely mismanaged and abused by relatives. We have very lazy people who cannot help us to prosper. Too much stealing from immediate family members. Then they expect us to pay for school fees, help them in everything aside from literally feeding them for over ten years! Some of my relatives are big on beer and they are are complete burden on us daily. 

You start to discipline them and they’ll go and backbite and become your biggest enemies! They will spread all kinds of ill-conceived fallacies aimed at tainting your name and family’s reputation.

We can’t even save anything at the end of the day as the practice is cyclical year in year out and it goes on like that until you become old and can’t do anything at all!

In the western world, when kids turn 18 they are left to fend for themselves but here in PNG, we literally look after relatives for a lifetime! How can then we be able to compete with the Asians, Bangladeshis etc????? They come in containers and starting something with determination and total

Commitment and they are far superior than ourselves.

Unless we encourage our kids and relatives to become independent and live their lives, we would never be able to undertake any serious investments. I have been living this cyclical process for the last 20 years of working and I can’t see any improvements going forward. 

In the public service I’m also seeing jealousies against our own kind and that continues to be the biggest setback to anything serious we might envisaged doing. We are so quick to give away land, business opportunities, etc to a foreigner of Asian origin then our own kind! When it comes to PNGans, jealousy is the setback!

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