‘PNG is most corrupt in Pacific’

Source: The National, Monday 05th December 2011

By SHIRLYN BELDEN
PAPUA New Guinea has the most corrupt public sector in the Pacific, according to the Corruption Perceptions Index 2011.
The CPI 2011 was launched in Port Moresby by the Transparency International PNG last Friday.
PNG scored the lowest point at 2.2 with the Solomon Islands scoring 2.7, Tonga 3.1, Kiribati 3.1, Vanuatu 3.5 and Samoa 3.9.
Fiji was not included in the Index.
Ranked globally, PNG is 154 out of 182 countries surveyed in the world.
The CPI ranked New Zealand, Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Singapore as the top five “very clean” countries with scores between 9.2 to  9.5.
The countries are ranked on a scale of zero to 10 with zero perceived to be corrupt and 10 to be least corrupt.
The ranking of countries and territories is based on how corrupt their public sector is perceived to be.
PNG’s ranking has not improved in the past four years – from 2.1 to 2.2.
Chairman of Transparency International PNG Lawrence Stephens said: “there remains a strong need to take action now by all citizens to fight corruption and for the government to practise good governance,” he said.
He said PNG’s lack of improvement on the CPI ranking could be attributed to the lack of real action by the governments – including the current one to deal with issues and the spread of corruption.
“Evidence of lack of political will to tackle corruption has been demonstrated in the way the governments have handled some of the nation’s controversial issues.”
He pointed out the special purpose agricultural business lease, the Moti affair, the Taiwan diplomacy scandal and the Cairns conservatory as examples of corruption by the government

PNG, ADB sign K209m loan to fix bridges

Source: Business, Post courier, November 05 2011

PAPUA New Guinea and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) have signed a loan worth $90 million (K209.6m) to help PNG rehabilitate 20-30 narrow, modular bridges on five national roads or replace them with permanent two-lane bridges.
Some of the bridges due for replacement will be reassembled on rural roads to connect rural communities to urban centres.
The loan signing ceremony took place at the PNG Embassy in Manila, Philippines. The PNG Ambassador Christian Vihruri signed the loan on behalf of the Government of PNG. Later, the loan agreement was signed by Bindu N. Lohani, vice-president, Knowledge Management and Sustainable Development, on behalf of ADB which is based in Manila.
“Replacing temporary steel bridges with wider, permanent bridges will help people and goods move from place to place much faster and at a lower cost with fewer worries about poor weather conditions,” said Hasan Masood, the project leader in ADB’s Pacific Department who attended the ceremony.
The bulk of PNG’s population lives in rural areas and the island nation’s rugged geography and scattered settlements mean the road network on the mainland is not fully connected. The Government has recognised lack of transport infrastructure as a major obstacle to PNG’s economic and social development.
The project will also finance road safety campaigns in rural areas along the five priority roads. Activities will include training for school children and communities, complemented by media campaigns which will address the personal safety concerns of women and children.
Road safety is a major issue in PNG with higher fatality rates in rural areas. Pedestrians account for most of these fatalities.
The project is the first phase of a more comprehensive bridge replacement program and covers five of the 16 priority national roads identified by the Government in its National Transport Development Plan. The roads are in the provinces of Central, Madang, East Sepik, West New Britain, and East New Britain.

Enga to work with churches

Source: Highlands Post, Post Courier, November 05 2011
By MAL TAIME

THE Enga Provincial Government is strengthening its initiative to work closely with church institutions in the province.
Governor Peter Ipatas said his government was now focusing on working with all churches because they were based at the rural communities and would serve them in a better way.
Mr Ipatas said this after presenting a cheque of K40,000 to Sikiro Catholic Parish in the remote Ambum District of the province.The short and significant ceremony was held at the church premise last Sunday , witnessed by a large crowd, especially church goers.
He revealed that he was surprised to see an existing facility like the YC Hall, recreation centre and playing field built by the Catholic Mission in the early 1960’s that benefitted the people.

Tari loses new bridge

Source: Highlands Post, Post Courier , November 05 2011
By ANDREW ALPHONSE

CONTINOUS heavy rain and flood has washed away the newly built temporary by-pass culvert bridge across the Alua river near Tari in the new Hela Province.
Huge trucks ferrying supplies to the multi-billion kina PNG LNG project areas have been stranded at either sides of Mendi and Tari section of the Highlands Highway since last Thursday. At Tari town, local markets and few shops reportedly ran short of basic supplies in the last few days.
Some people took the risk to bring in the supplies across the river on foot before catching a waiting vehicle on the other side to get to Tari.
Due to the road closure, vendors have also increased the prices of basic goods.
Vehicles and passengers from Mendi and other parts of the Highlands region could not get into Tari, Koroba, Lake Kopiago, Komo, Nogoli, Hides 4 and Hides 1 project areas in the last few days as traffic was severely disrupted. Only light 4WD vehicles are taking the risk to cross the river using a tiny by-pass created upstream by the locals who have charged K50 per vehicle that crossed. Few metres downstream, the locals squeezed the opportunity to make a profit by building a small foot bridge. They are charging K1 a person for “using” the bridge to cross to either side. Contractor Curtain Brothers (CB) PNG Ltd last week tried to repair the bridge but the locals threatened the workers and would not allow them to do repair work as they demanded compensation payment for the land used.
On Saturday, with the help of Tari policemen led by police station commander chief inspector Michael Welly and mobile squad 10 from Mendi attached with the LNG security operations, the company was able to start work on the bridge.
An expatriate CB civil works specialist said the company would place some more 10 metres long galvanised culverts across the river to spread and reduce the force of any future floods while rock boulders would also be placed upstream to try and slow the current of the river flow.
Another CB community affairs officer said they expected to complete the repair work on the temporary bridge tomorrow.
The source said the temporary bridge was only constructed last month but the company suspected that the locals may have used debris and boulders to block the in-lets which forced the river to over-flood and wash the culverts away.
The temporary bridge was built at the current site upstream after the aging bailey bridge at the river collapsed on October 13.

Living positive

Mary breaks 2-year silence

By EVAH KUAMIN

SHE has only been living with the HIV virus for the past two years but yesterday she took the courage and bravely allowed time to break the ice and speak to the media about her status.
Mary*(name withheld) is a 20-year-old Morobean woman and comes from Buigim Village in the Finschhafen District.
She was born the eldest child in a family of four and was in Grade 9 at the Dregerhafen Technical Secondary School when she first learnt about HIVAids.
That year 2008, she decided to withdraw from boarding school and spend her time helping her parents in the village. She contracted the virus in October 2009 and discovered her status after going for a HIV test at the Braun Memorial Hospital in Finschhafen.
She was placed on medical treatment for the past three years and is continuing to this day.
Mary left her home and joined the Morobe Network for People Living with HIV/Aids (MNPLWHA) just last year.
During this time, she has gained the courage to speak out openly about her status going on awareness and outreach to areas along the Okuk Highway.
Yesterday Mary left with a team from the MNPLWHA to conduct awareness in the Bulolo District.
It was a first for the young woman to go on the awareness campaign trail into Bulolo.
The shy, soft-spoken woman said it was difficult at first to openly speak out and disclose her status to her family and friends but she has slowly overcome this.
She was reluctant to inform her parents in fear that they might disown her from the family but this has proven otherwise. After learning of her status, her parents have accepted her and have helped by providing spiritual care.
Mary said she has a lot of other friends who have the same status as herself of whom some are as young as 14 years.
With the assistance of the different district aids committees in the province and partners, Mary has also been trained to be a counselor to help people who are in the same shoes as herself.
Her parents are the only family she has of whom she has disclosed her status.
She has plans that in the future, she would be able to break the ice and speak out openly in creating awareness and outreach on HIV/AIDS in her own community.
During awareness campaigns, Mary is given time to share her life testimony and leaves with a challenge to her peers and people not to indulge in risky and unsafe sexual practices.

Govt fails to look after its people

Source: The National, Thursday 01st December 2011

Our simple folk ask for little – a road, a bridge perhaps, a school and a hospital.
They fend for themselves as they have done for the last 50,000 years.
They toil without complaint and with much respect for the educated and those that lead.
They complain only when they do not get the attention that they rightly deserve.
They are unaware of the substantial resources that are squandered in their name.
They are oblivious to the devious scams and schemes that their leaders concoct to deprive them of what is rightfully theirs.
Their children walk on deteriorated roads to a school with no desks, to visit a library with no books, to sit in a classroom with no teachers.
Their women trudge to aid posts with no medicines, no nurses and no doctors.
Meanwhile, the government urges them to free up the last true possession they have, their land … for development purposes.
Large international forces loom in the near future, prodding the government that no longer represents the people, to push them aside ... for “development” or for “progress”.
Every week another child dies from dysentery in a remote district for lack of medical care.
A mother is a victim of lawlessness and suffers the humiliation and trauma of rape as she struggles to survive in an increasingly lawless society.
Youths, disillusioned and bitter, turn to drugs and alcohol, walking like zombies throughout the deteriorated stations and districts that dot the rural areas of PNG.
Ethnic tension and deteriorating law and order affect the ordinary folk with fear and anxiety.
This is our country, PNG
Gary Juffa
Kokoda, Oro

Winds of change at Mt Kare

Source: The National, Thursday 01st December 2011

By YEHIURA HRIEHWAZI

THERE is a breath of fresh air and winds of change blowing up the Mt Kare valley – where it attracted one of the biggest modern-day gold rushes in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
New developer Indochine Mining Ltd, yesterday told the mining and petroleum conference in Port Moresby that Mt Kare was expected to be the next big gold mine in PNG.
One of the biggest hurdles in working the prospect was the constant landowner disputes between the Paelans in Enga province and the Hulis of the new Hela province over the mountain area, which was once a no-man’s land until CRA Minerals geologists led by John Batram walked in, set up camp and in the process of digging a latrine, unearthed pure gold nuggets.
The word leaked out and the rest was history.
CRA pulled out after its camp was raided by Engan hooligans financed by certain politicians and since then various companies like Madison went it, drilled some holes and left because of constant landowner hassles.
Now, there is hope in what is dubbed  the “Melanesian Way” through the engagement of a Fijian mining engineer George Niumataiwalu, who was recently appointed the Mt Kare project director by Indochine.
This man is credited for managing the Hidden Valley project in its early days and was the key player in addressing landowner issues and setting up the basic social and technical infrastructure that Harmony Gold of South Africa and Newcrest were riding on.
“What we are doing is different from the past … I am taking the Melanesian approach to resolve conflicts,” he said of Mt Kare where about a million ounces of gold nuggets were taken out during the alluvial rush.
When the company went in recently, it set up camp away from the former Madison camp as a tribal fight was taking place there and eventually worked their way through “wanbel” discussions with the locals.
“We must be friends to all the parties,” and not deal only with selected few landowners, he told The National on the conference sideline.
There area had no road connection although it is 15km south of Porgera gold mine and the logistics of getting supplies in were tough.
He said helicopters were refusing to fly in because landowners were threatening to shoot them down.
Even Papua New Guinean workers refused to go and work there and the weather, compared to his sunshine islands, “its brutally cold”.
He said there were now changing perceptions in the area with “winds of change”, with the people welcoming a project that’s been on and off for many years.
The people feel they wanted the project  because of the PNG LNG project in Hela and the Porgera mine in the north, Niumataiwalu said.
“They feel it’s their opportunity now to get their project going.”
Niumataiwalu said Mt Kare presented to PNG the possibility of the next big gold mine.
He said they were lucky to also recruit a few geologists from other companies to work there, although it was initially difficult.
He spoke about Mt Kare after a brief introduction by his boss, the Indochine chief executive John Promnitz, who prefaced their presentation with “Developing the next world-class gold mine”.
They said the prefeasibility study was underway and was expected to be completed by the middle of next year.
While they worked on a estimated two million ounce deposit of gold and silver, they strongly believed that the drilling programmes would prove up more reserves as Mt Kare had the same ore body and geology as Porgera mine which had 30 million ounces of gold and was producing up to 1.5moz  per year for the next 20 years.
There was significant upside to their drilling.
Past drilling results included 34.5m at 7.2grams/tonne of gold, 139g/t of silver and 16.5m at 11.8g/t of gold and 19g/t of silver.
Indochine was now repeating the drilling programmes to ascertain the deposit  size and said it was looking positive.
They said it was a challenging environment in a “boom time”.
 Mt Kare was managed by an experienced team, which developed projects in the past in PNG with Niumataiwalu as the leader who has “done this before in PNG” where he took the Hidden Valley project  from feasibility study to permitting, and successfully signed on landowner agreements – using the “Melanesian way”.

Ipatas Cup downsized

Source: Sport, Post Courier, December 1, 2011


Four regions to have eight teams each in playoff

By CHARLES YAPUMI

Organisers of the 2011-2012 Coca Cola Ipatas Cup tournament will only allow eight teams in a region to register for the elimination fixtures.
Registration for the Mamose Region will close this Friday and Northern region coordinator Mona Tonsy Clyde said, registration forms have been sent to interested clubs and the first eight teams to register will be accepted.
So far six teams from Mamose have already registered and only two spaces are left before close of registration, he said. The games will be staged in Lae.
Teams confirmed are Lae Biscuit Spiders, Kamkumung Crushers, Kainantu, Markam Ramu, Bulolo and Bumbu Barbarians.
After the eliminations matches, the top two teams from the four regions will go to Wabag for the playoffs.
Meanwhile, the official calendar launching of the Ipatas Cup will be held at Lae Aviat Club together with the Toyota Enga Mioks presentation night on the December 16.
The newly appointed general secretary for Ipatas Cup, Molly Perry Geno will confirm the teams from Southern, Island, and Highlands during the launching.
More than 216 team have shown interest but only eight teams in each region will be playing, and the winners and runners-up will qualify for the K200,000 cash playoff, expected to be staged in Wabag.

Rugby league competition makes inroads in Hela region

Source: The National, Thursday 01st December 2011

FOR the first time, Tugupa rugby league in the Komo-Margarima district, Hela, started their off-season competition.
League coordinator John Tukai said there were six new clubs from Komo and Hides Valley of the PNG LNG Construction site willing to participate.
The six teams are Inane Warriors, Hides (4) Raiders, PK Panthers, Komo Jets, Timala Eels and Piripi Tigers.
Tukai said the local community would like the competition to go ahead despite continuous tribal fights in the area.
The competition has also attracted workers at the LNG construction site in Hides (4), Komo International Airport and Nogoli.
He has challenged the youths to take ownership of the competition.
Tukai, who is a former patron of Porgera rugby league in Enga in the 1990s, is one of the experienced officials in rugby league. He was one of the persons behind the establishment of rugby league in Porgera.
Some of the players in the league have broken in the national and international ranks playing in franchise clubs and the PNG Kumuls.
He will put a letter of expression to the PNG Rugby Football League (PNGRFL) highlands office to assess and recommend for the league to be an affiliate of the national body.
It will ensure players in the league be given an opportunity to participate in the zone trials and other competition sanctioned by the PNGRFL

PJV pays K488mil in compo and royalties

Source: The National, Wednesday 30th November 2011

ByANCILLA WRAKUALE
THE Porgera Joint Venture paid a total of K1.5 billion in taxes and duties this year, a PJV manager said.
Processing manager of PJV Ridge Nyashanu presented the figures yesterday at the mining seminar in Port Moresby.
He said K300 million was paid as royalties for this year alone.
A total of K188 million was paid as compensation last October while K115 million went to tax credit scheme projects.
Nyashanu said PJV production accounted for 12% of PNG’s total export over the current life of mine for the past 20 years.
Business development received K2 billion this year.
Last year, K54 million was paid to Porgera contracts, K47 million to Enga contracts and K48 million to other contracts within the country.
Meanwhile, Nyashanu said deterioration in law and order in Porgera- Liaigam was the most significant risk to the PJV operation.
He said PJV was working in partnership with the national and provincial governments, local communities and community stakeholder agencies through “restoring justice initiative to strengthen and support law and justice”.
Nyashanu said there was an overwhelming support from community, local, provincial and national government of plans to address the complex issue.
He said one of the aims of restoring justice initiative was to help the community address new and long-standing issues, including violence against women, tribal fighting, loose firearms, drug and alcohol abuse and illegal mining.
Nyashanu said the population in Porgera valley has grown from 5,000 prior to construction, to about 45,000 at present due to the mining activity there.
He stressed that some causes of illegal mining in Porgera were due to increased number of people moving to Porgera to benefit from the developed infrastructure and the inability of police to maintain law and order