Rainful to be less than normal as El Nino sets in

Source: The National, Thursday July 30th, 2015

RAINFALL will be far less than normal this year as the effects of El Nino set in, the National Weather Service Office has predicted.
Such conditions can lead to serious drought, the office said.
“El Niño events are not due to climate change. They are natural climate variability events, which tend to occur every three to seven years,” it said.
The 1997-98 El Niño was declared by climate scientists as the “El Niño of the century” but the current one could supersede that due to the nature and the timing of its development, the office said.
“El Niño events are global climate events with different degrees of impacts across the country. For Papua New Guinea, the most affected provinces are Central, Western and parts of the Highlands and Mamose.
“Kiunga and Balimo in Western are two of the towns that are adversely affected.”
Climate and Special Services assistant director Kasis Inape said: “According to the chart, Figure 1 shows the rainfall distribution for Kiunga during the three different periods.
“The blue curve represents the average rainfall during the year while the red and green curves show the rainfall patterns during the 1997-98 and the 2015 El Niño years respectively.
“It is easy to note from the figure that rainfall is seriously reduced during the El Niño years.”
Inape said the Fly River was the operational lifeline of Ok Tedi. “During the El Niño phenomena, the rainfall is seriously reduced making the water levels drop sharply, making it very difficult for the transportation of iron ore and other minerals for export to be barged down the Fly River.
“From Figure 1, the June rainfall for Kiunga is already 50 per cent less than the average and the forecast is that this dryness will continue for the next four-six months, even longer.
“This is consistent with the current understanding that once an El Niño is declared, it will last for more than 10 or more months before it finally dissipates.
“Table 1 shows the progression of drought in Kiunga during the 1997-98 El Niño event. Drought warning was issued in January 1997 and the drought actually started in April 1997 and reached its peak in September before dissipating in May 1998.
“We are expecting this scenario for this year’s El Niño.”
Inape said: “We are now in a much better position than when we were in 1997-98 as far as our understanding of El Niño is concerned so we are providing forecast with some level of confidence and certainty.
“El Niño events are slow-moving phenomena and therefore, gives us ample time to prepare for the adverse effects associated with them such as drought and frost.”

Parinjo killed in mob attack

Source: The National, Monday 27th Febuary 2012

By GABRIEL FITO and THOMAS HUKAHU

WEWAK police station commander Snr Insp Charles Parinjo was allegedly killed when he confronted a drunken mob obstructing traffic while on his way home last Saturday night.
The mob was obstructing traffic at a section of the West Coast highway at Kaindi and, in a bid to disperse them, Parinjo was attacked and killed.
He was heading home to Boikin village when the incident happened between 8pm and 8.30p“During the confrontation with the mob, Parinjo was hit by a PMV and dragged for several metres before being left to die,” East Sepik provincial law and order chairman Timothy Wani said.
Parinjo was rushed to the hospital by lawyer Michael S Wagambie.
An examination at Wewak General Hospital revealed Parinjo, who was pronounced dead on arrival, had suffered multiple injuries to his body.

Tension was high in the area yesterday as police sought out the suspects, Wani said.

He said police had burned down several houses near the scene of the killing.

A suspect was in custody while the search is continuing for others involved in the officer’s death.

Police from Aitape and Vanimo townships joined their Wewak counterparts in the manhunt yesterday.

Wani denounced the killing of the young senior officer who had stood “by the books” to enforce law and order without fear or favour.

“He was a respected policeman. He had done a lot in a short time to improve working conditions for police in the province,” he said.

“His killing should be condemned in the strongest possible terms.”

Wagambie, who was travelling with a group of people to Wewak from Hawaiin, said Parinjo’s death had happened near a local club that sold alcohol.

The group was confronted by a man armed with an iron rod when they stopped the vehicle.

The man was pulled away by bystanders who told Wagambie and his group to assist Parinjo.

Wagambie’s group put the injured Parinjo into their vehicle and took him to hospital.

Wagambie said the community’s failure to curb alcohol, homebrew and consumption of illicit drugs was behind many of the country’s problems.

“Homebrew particularly is the problem in communities. Failure to contain its production and consumption has resulted in violence, conflicts, deaths and related issues,” he said

Police warn locals against roadblocks

Source: The National, Wednesday 22nd Febuary 2012

AEPANDA and Lyamala villagers, in the Laiagam district of Enga province, have been warned not to disrupt transportation by setting up road blocks.
Provincial police commander Martin Lakari issued the warning yesterday after the villa­gers chopped trees down to block a 3km section of the Wabag-Porgera road, bringing traffic to a standstill on Monday.
Chief Supt Lakari said more than 100 policemen had to be called in to clear the roadblock between Aepanda and Lyamala.
Police, using axes, chainsaws and dump trucks needed nine hours to remove the trees from the road.
Lakari said the road belonged to the government and the villagers did not have any right to block it and cause inconvenience for road users.
They were proper procedures to follow if the villagers had any grie­vances with the Works Department on road improvement payments.
Taking the law into their hands would not help solve any problem and would create another problem, Lakari said.
The villagers had blocked the road to protest the prolonged delay by the Works Department in paying them for improvements to the road.
Lakari said the assessment on the improvements on the sides of the road were carried out by the Works Department when construction began two years ago, but so far no payment had been made.
He said the villagers held a secret meeting on Sunday and on Monday morning they chopped down trees growing by the roadside.
Police will now monitor the area and will arrest anyone setting up a roadblock.

Unanswered phone call ends daughter’s life

Source: The National, Friday 18th November 2011

A 14-year-old school girl was beaten to death by her father last week after she failed to answer his phone call after school.
A police report said the school girl from St Michael’s Primary School arrived home after 9pm, which enraged her father, who took out a power cord and allegedly whipped her with it.
National Capital District metropolitan commander Supt Joseph Tondop said the 36-year-old father from Hanuabada village was in police custody.
He said although the man had been concerned about his daughter when she did not return home early from school and tried to discipline her, he had no reason to kill her.
Tondop said medical examinations revealed “excessive force” had been used, resulting in her death.
Tondop said police detained the man over the weekend while investigations continued.
Tondop said in another incident, a Southern Highlands youth was killed by a mob that attacked him.
He said a 19-year-old suspect from Ialibu had been detained for
leading the mob that killed the youth from Kagua.
Tondop said a security guard manning a building in downtown Port Moresby was questioned by police after trying to steal electrical appliances worth more than K4,000 inside the property.
Tondop said the 19-year-old security guard from Kompiam, Enga, had been guarding the seventh floor of the building.
He said when the suspect learned he was being monitored by CCTV; he damaged the camera as well.
And, a former member of parliament has lost more than K40,000 worth of property including his personal car when thugs torched his vehicle last week.
Tondop said the former leader from the highlands was at the front of the Parliament House after 5pm when five unknown suspects held him up and took his car, a Toyota Camry.
The thugs took the vehicle to 8-Mile, near the power station, and torched the vehicle.
Meanwhile, a nine-year-old boy was sexually molested in the bushes of ATS, near the Jackson International Airport last week.
The Grade 1 pupil from Eki Vaki Elementary School was lured towards the bushes with a K10 note by a man from Gulf and abused.
When the victim refused, the suspect assaulted the victim, who then, fearing his life, did as he was told.
Tondop reiterated his call for parents to be vigilant about the whereabouts of their children

Squatting needs a serious look

Source: yutok, Post Courier, Wednesday October 27, 2011 
SQUATTING in towns in Papua New Guinea is a major problem.
It an issue that needs to be addressed by governments both national and at the provincial level. It is such a major problem that it is causing problems not only for the town management teams but tradtional land owners where towns are built.
Towns are on piece of land acquired by the State. Improvement and developments means available Government land have been used up and settlers, whether by choice or neccessity, are forced to setle on land that is not their’s.
Squatting consists of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied space or building, usually residential that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have permission to use.
Experts suggest that there are one billion squatters globally, that is, about one in every six people on the planet. Yet, squatting is largely absent from policy and academic debate and is not often seen as, as a problem.
In many of the world’s poorer countries, there are extensive slums or shanty towns, built on the edges of major cities and consisting of self-constructed housing built without the landowner’s permission. These settlements may, in time, grow to become both legalised and indistinguishable from normal residential neighbourhoods, but they uusually start off as squats with minimal basic infrastructure.
Uusually there is no sewage system, drinking water must be bought from vendors or carried from a nearby tap, and if there is electricity, it is often stolen from a passing cable.
Squatters do not care and will often forcefully stake “their claim’’. It is now the case in Lae, Morobe Province where customary landowners again find themselves at loggerheads with settlers encroaching on their traditional land.
For years, there has been running battle with lopcals and setlers in Lae. Customary landowners, in the latest effort stave off settlers, have now put a stop to the seeling of portions of land belonging to them from Nine Mile to 14 Mile, along the Highlands Highway outside Lae city,. The reason; increased social problems. Yes settlements are havens for criminals and criminal activities because most of those that live there are the unemployed drifting into town ion the hiope of landing jobs for a comfortable life. It is also however true that there is now a large portion of the formal worforce, living in settlements.
Settlements provide a cheap accommodation, and in the face of huge rentals in all urban areas,workers are forced to there. They just simply can’t afford real estate rentals at the prices being charged, except for a privileged few who are lucky enough to have their employers provide or pay for their rent.
One thing is for sure, these settlements are here to stay. What we need now is a good government plan to look at how the country manages this mance, now and in the future.
We should look at all options such as building affordable housing and which can be sold off to tenants, or setting aside properly designated areas for urban settlements. Something has to be done otherwise we will conti9nue to see probelms such as is hapening in Lae continue and with more and more people moving into towns and the population expanding, municipal services as well will put put under extreme presssure and nasty confrontations continue