Fifteen break out of Hagen police lockup

By JAMES APA GUMUNO

 

FIFTEEN remandees broke out of an overcrowded Mt Hagen police cell on Monday afternoon during a heavy downpour, The National reports.

The National Court remandees from Baisu jail broke the brick wall, jumped over the security fence and dashed to freedom.

Metropolitan commander Chief Insp John Kale said yesterday that the 15 escapees were among 99 who had been locked up in the cell which was built to hold no more than 50 prisoners.

He said the remandees had been brought from the jail to the police cell to await their court appearances when they escaped under the cover of heavy rain between 3pm and 4pm.

Kale said that none had been recaptured after the alarm was raised.

He said that the breakout would not have happened if the cell blocks had been renovated and the holes in the brick work patched.

Kale said numerous requests had been made to headquarters for funds to renovate but to no avail.

Meanwhile, he appealed to the people to cooperate with police and correctional services officers to recapture the escapees.

He said that these escapees were dangerous and posed a big threat to the community.

Attempts made to get in touch with Baisu jail commander yesterday afternoon for further comments were unsuccessful.

 

Defence under scrutiny

THE PNG Defence Force is expected to come under the microscope of the government when the National Executive Council meets today, The National reports.

Some cabinet members are furious that both the uniformed and civilian heads of the Defence Force are out of the country when it is facing dire situations with power, telephone, and water to Murray Barracks cut off for non-payment of bills.

Sources said Defence secretary Fred Punangi was in Israel with Foreign Minister Sam Abal while commander Brig-Gen Francis Agwi is in South Korea for a regional meeting.

Both have taken trips at a time when questions about mismanagement of finance, frustrations about lack of consultations and tensions were emerging from army headquarters, causing grave concern in government.

Punangi is understood to have travelled despite a direction from Defence Minister Bob Dadae for him not to take the trip.

“Our phones have been cut and we have been without power for over two months.

“This is Murray Barracks, the PNG Defence Force headquarters we are talking about.

“Yet, the two heads can find the money to travel abroad, but cannot find the money to pay the bills to restore these vital services,” a defence source said.

Dadae is expected to brief cabinet on the situation confronting the force, and may even recommend that action be taken against those in charge.

Sources said heads of various sections of the force had become very concerned about the transfer of funds from one account to another and the use of those funds for purposes not intended for.

A number of confidential internal PNGDF correspondences sighted by The National suggested a deep level of frustration about these issues.

Defence ministry officials contacted refused to comment, saying the minister was the only one authorised to do so.

Agriculture officers urged to deal with prolonged dry

By SOLDIER BURUKA of DAL

Floriculture is one of the agriculture activities supported through the SSSEP. Goroka women proudly show off their floral arrangements during a recent show

Agricultural officers in the Eastern Highlands province have been urged to provide the best advice to help farmers to deal with the prolonged dry weather conditions currently affecting the region.

Many farmers in the rural areas are depending on the agriculture staff to assist in providing the most appropriate advice and technical support, according to John Gimisive, the province’s deputy administrator for district services and local government.

Gimisive said farmers in the province and elsewhere in the region now faced difficulties with their food gardens, coffee trees and livestock because of the prolonged dry weather.

The dry weather conditions have affected many food gardens and people were not harvesting their normal food staples resulting in widespread hunger.

Gimisive made the remarks when he officially opened a one-day workshop on the smallholder support services expansion Project (SSSEP) in Goroka recently.

Staff of the SSSEP under the Department of Agriculture and Livestock met with the Eastern Highlands provincial administration to discuss the SSSEP, district selection criteria and methods and processes for district agriculture planning.

The SSSEP is an agriculture smallholder extension concept successfully trialled in Eastern Highlands and Morobe and is now being expanded to other districts in these two provinces as well as Chimbu and Central provinces.

The pilot phase of the project, funded by the Asian Development Bank, proved successful during its trial phase.

The expansion phase has again been made possible by a K3 million grant provided by the New Zealand government through its aid agency, NZAid.  

Gimisive said he hoped that through the expansion of SSSEP in the province, the provincial and district staff could utilise their knowledge, skills and experiences to assist farmers in dealing with dry weather conditions.

He said farmers needed to be encouraged to look at different farming options and alternatives instead of their traditional practices to overcome difficult situations.

 He said the SSSEP was a good extension concept that had been well received and had improved agriculture extension and agriculture productivity in the Eastern Highlands and Morobe provinces.

He said three new districts in Eastern Highlands would be included in the expansion phase and he urged relevant district staff to give their best in making the concept work in the rural areas.

DAL’s Highlands' regional director Mawe Gonapa said region was densely populated and with the creation of two new provinces, Hela and Jiwaka, and increase in mining activities especially with the LNG project, the delivery of agricultural services was far more important than previously.

He said people were more willing to try out new innovations such as the SSSEP concept to improve their livelihood.

DAL will work in partnership with the provoincial administration and other stakeholders to promote agriculture initiatives that will bring benefits and change their lifestyles.

He said food crops including rice, vegetables, honey bee, fish farming, livestock and other activities were expected to get a boost with the expansion of SSSEP.

Eastern Highlands provincial agriculture advisor Bubia Muhuju said there were many challenges facing the administration including dry weather conditions which were leading to drought, and the LNG project which means there would be more demand for food.

He said there was inadequate capacity to meet the supply and demand and to deal with disaster situations, but he hoped that through the SSSEP there would be some ways and means to overcome these problems.

SSSEP will provide the opportunity to boost food production as well as introduction of high yielding crops with nutritional value.

He said officers in the districts lacked resources and funding and he appealed to political leaders to give more support to agriculture-based programmes.

Eastern Highlands deputy administrator for project management and coordination, Solomon Tato, in closing the workshop said the administration appreciated the support from DAL and NZAid and agreed that the SSSEP concept could be expanded to other sectors.

“Eastern Highlands depends on its natural resources because it does not have any mining, gas and oil, and it is therefore imperative that all stakeholders including politicians and leaders need to work together to improve agriculture productivity,” he said.

“District staff have also been urged to work as a team and make an impact in the communities they serve.”

Tato also pointed that a new structure was being finalised, which means there would be more new positions for agricultural officers in the districts.

Distinguished USA professorship to Papua New Guinea writer/scholar

By MALUM NALU

 

The University of Hawaii in the USA has recognised Dr Steven Edmund Winduo’s creative and intellectual contributions to the production of new knowledge and culture in the Asia Pacific region.  

Dr Winduo, a columnist with The National, is the first Papua New Guinean to be awarded the distinguished Arthur Lynn Andrews chair in Pacific and Asian studies.

He is recognised for his consistent creative output and intellectual scholarship in the area of Pacific literature and indigenous knowledge productions.

Dr Winduo will take up the award in Jan 1, 2011.

He will teach a senior honors level course, entitled Studies in Literature and Culture of the Pacific. 

In addition, he will deliver two public lectures on Pacific literature and cultural productions and give a reading of his poetry in conjunction with the department of English.

“The Andrews chair was established by Harriet Cousens Andrews to promote Pacific and Asian studies at the University of Hawaii through the selection of outstanding visiting professors each year,” Dr Winduo said.
”The chair’s name honors Arthur Lynn Andrews (1871-1945

“The Andrews chair is a distinguished professorial chair held at 100% fulltime employment within the School of Pacific and Asian Studies.

“It was set up by a bequest made in honor of Arthur Lynn Andrews, who was the first dean of the University of Hawaii, college of arts and the sciences, in 1920.

“He was later the dean of faculties from 1930 to 1936, when he retired and served as a member of the University of Hawaii board of regents from 1941 to 1943.

“The Arthur Lynn Andrews chair is cycled within the school of Pacific and Asian studies. “Previous Pacific Islanders to receive this award include the famous New Zealand-based Samoan writer Albert Wendt and Sia Figiel, also of Samoa and a Commonwealth writers’ prize winner.”

Dr Winduo is one of PNG’s leading writers and scholar with 20 years of teaching, research, and writing experience with UPNG.

He earned his PhD in English at the University of Minnesota, USA under the Fulbright and MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1998.  

His MA degree in English was earned at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand.  

His BA and BA Honours degrees in literature, philosophy, and history were earned at UPNG.

As a PNG writer, Dr Winduo has more international success with his works published, read, cited, and discussed in various publications and universities around the world.

Dr Winduo’s writings and ideas are studied in courses on the literature and cultures of the Pacific Islands at the University of Hawaii, University of Texas, Cornell University, University of New Mexico, University of Auckland, Heidelburg University (Germany), and the University of the South Pacific.

He commands respect as an influential writer and scholar within the South Pacific region.

 His literary scholarship and writings are recognised internationally.

 He has an impressive list of publications.

This year Dr Winduo added three new books to his credits A Rower’s Song, Reframing Indigenous Knowledge, and The Unpainted Mask.

He is working on several more new books he hopes to have published in the upcoming year.

Dr Winduo writes a weekly column as Steven’s Window in The National’s Weekender and blogs as www.stevenswindow.blogspot.com

He held the visiting professor in English at the University of Minnesota between 2007 and 2008.

In 2006, he served as a Macmillan Brown research scholar at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand.  

He was also the co-ordinator of Oceania Future Forum for the Japanese Foundation and Waseda Hoshien International University in Tokyo, Japan.

He taught as a guest lecturer on board the Cairns-based Oceanic Discoverer, a tourist ship cruising through the Melanesian Islands of New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and PNG.

Dr Winduo is a founding member and served as the vice-president of the Samoan-based International Council for the Study of Pacific Islands.

Apart from his teaching, Dr Winduo also contributes his vast knowledge and experience to various developmental activities coordinated the Media Council of PNG, Bible Society of PNG, Correctional Services the National Literacy and Awareness Secretariat.

Dr Winduo designed the blueprint for the establishment of Melanesian and Pacific studies (MAPS) and the Melanesian institute of arts and communication (MIAC) in the school of humanities and social sciences at UPNG.

He is pleased with the recognition and award offered to him by international universities, especially in the USA.

“The distinguished Arthur Lynn Andrews professorship is an honour given out to few influential scholars within the Asia Pacific region,” Dr Winduo said.

“For me, this award is special because it is an international honor that raises the bar to another level.

“UPNG has no professorial positions to fill or any award system to recognise outstanding scholarship and academic productivity by this national academic.

“Nonetheless, I am happy with UPNG’s support in releasing me to take up this award at the centre for Pacific studies in the school of Pacific and Asian studies, University of Hawaii, USA.”

 

United against hunger

By SENIORL ANZU of NARI

Research organisations and governments working together. Such is a positive move against  hunger in PNG

The need for greater collaboration and partnership at all levels in the fight against world hunger is a strong call at this year’s World Food Day, which took place last weekend – October 16.

This is the message from the theme, ‘United Against Hunger’, which was chosen to recognise the efforts made in defeating world hunger at national, regional and internationals levels. This theme is closely related to last year’s in ‘achieving food security in times of crisis’.

Uniting against hunger becomes real when state and civil society organisations and the private sector work in partnership at all levels to defeat hunger, extreme poverty and malnutrition, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations.

There are regional and international partnerships emerging around this course.

International organisations, particularly the Rome-based United Nations agencies [Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), World Food Programme (WFP)] have realised the key strategic role they play in directing global efforts to reaching the Millennium Development Goal # 1 - eradicate extreme poverty and hunger – which calls for halving the hungry people in the world by 2015.

The World Food Security initiatives are shouldered by the UN system and other players in the area of food security and nutrition.

They include the civil society, NGOs and representatives of all relevant people affected by food insecurity, international agricultural research institutions, financial institutions and development banks, donors, trade organisations, and will be open to the private sector and philanthropic foundations.

In some 30 countries, national alliances composed of civil society organisations and government agencies are actively collaborating together to promote advocacy and awareness-raising activities.

In 2009, the World Summit on Food Security, or hunger summit, adopted a declaration renewing the commitment made at the 1996 World Food Summit to eradicate hunger sustainably from the face of the earth.

The declaration also called for an increase in domestic and international funding for agriculture, new investments in the rural sector, improved governance of global food issues in partnership with relevant stakeholders from the public and private sector, and more action to face the threat climate change poses to food security.

In 2009 also, the “1 billion hungry project” commenced reaching out to people through online social media to invite them to sign the anti-hunger petition at www.1billionhungry.org.

The petition is a reflection of the moral outrage of global hunger situation.

The PNG Department of Agriculture and Livestock announced the concept last week, inviting citizens to participate in signing the hunger petition in Port Moresby.

Immediate dialogue and collaborations in PNG and the Pacific are paramount.

This is so especially when the country is faced with challenges in climate change, pest and disease outbreak (potato late blight, cocoa pod borer), El Nino and La Nina cycles, land degradation and population pressure.

 The country is classified among 80 with Low Income Food Deficit by FAO, a categorisation based on the increasing quality of food imports, particularly cereal, as well as the per capita energy supply.

Further, the malnutrition rates are among the highest globally.

There is widening gap between the growing demand for food, particularly in the urban areas, and static domestic production which is largely filled by food imports, according to PNG National Food Security Policy 2000-2010 (PNGNFSP).

 This is the blueprint developed to create awareness and seek support to increase and diversify food production, processing and preservation, marketing and distribution in order to achieve greater self-sufficiency in food and attain for security at the national, provincial, district and household levels by the year 2015.

Threats to food security may arise from shortfalls in subsistence food production, very low cash income or both, according to agricultural expert, Mike Bourke.

The threats may be long-term (such as those caused by an extreme climate event) or short-term (such as a very low cash income and no access to land).

However, when there have never been so many hungry people in the world on this World Food Day 2010, FAO encourages the world population to reflect on the future.

“With willpower, courage and persistence – and many players working together and helping each other – more food can be produced, more sustainably, and get into the mouths of those who need it most.”

PNG also has the chance to improve its production and productivity of food and livestock and become food-assured and self-reliant.

PNG must not only produce enough for her own consumption but also for export to many needy countries.

PNG has the advantage because of its huge resource base and potential which are yet to be explored.

 This nation has just six million people with enormous agricultural resources such as vast land mass, fertile soils and favourable climate for various types and kinds of crops.

PNG has a rich bio-diversity and a variety of food species, fruits and nuts, and cash crops. Farmers can grow various crops including cereals and pulses together with a range of livestock species.

There are also abundant land and bio-mass, creating opportunities for bio-fuels as well.

PNG has made modest advances on the technology front in terms of improved varieties and practices for a range of agricultural commodities and environments.

This also means that there must be favourable policies towards agriculture with adequate funding.

These must be supported by governance and management of agricultural programmes and projects at all levels.

Pastor Joseph Kingal is dead

Wife and children in hospital after tragic road accident

CHRISTIANS and Lae residents were last night mourning the death outspoken spiritual leader and evangelist Pr Joseph Kingal (pictured above, right), who was killed in a road accident yesterday evening, The National reports.

Kingal and his family were involved in a tragic road accident at Zuming Bridge in Markham, about 120km out of Lae.

Kingal, his wife Susan, and their four children were returning to Lae from Madang when the accident happened.

Pr Sesere Kebei, who rushed to the accident site, said the vehicle, driven by Kingal, overshot the bridge and fell into the river.

It was not clear what caused the accident.

Kingal and his family were returning home after a week-long crusade in Madang.

The spiritual leader sustained fatal injuries to his head

and body, Kebei said.

“It appears he died at the site. It was a real tragedy,” he said.

Susan Kingal and one of the younger child sustained serious injuries but were believed to be in “serious but stable condition”, Kebei said.

Mutzing police station commander Sgt Alex Romosaso said Kingal was killed in the accident as he was driving his family to Lae in their family vehicle – a Toyota landcruiser trooper – late in the afternoon.

Staff members at Mutzing Health Centre tried frantically to stabilise the condition of the family before rushing them to Angau Memorial Hospital last night.

News about the accident spread quickly throughout Lae city and around the country.

Christian members and relatives around the city rushed to the Angau Memorial Hospital and waited for the family to arrive.

The family was brought to Angau hospital’s accident and emergency entrance and rushed to the operating theatre as family members, Christians and Lae residents held a prayer vigil.

The hospital was packed with people, and Kuima and G4S security guards worked hard to control the crowd, to ensure they were not in the way of medical staff.

A nurse contacted by The National last night said they were under strict instructions not to speak to anyone about the condition of the pastor and his family.

Kebei said he had known Kingal since university days.

“His impact and influence was extraordinary. He had a great heart and mind and was a very inspirational person.”

Joseph and Susan Kingal founded The Word, The Spirit, and The Cross Evangelistic Ministries Inc, in 1994. Since then, they had inspired, saved and healed thousands of people nationwide.

Kingal holds a degree in accounting from the University of Technology while his wife had graduated from Madang’s Divine Word University with a diploma in accountancy.

State caught in 8-year-old K100m bill

By PATRICK TALU

 

THE state has to fork out nearly K100 million to pay a construction company because of the failure to settle a debt that has been growing through interest for eight years, The National reports.

Treasurer Peter O’Neill confirmed last night that the government would hold talks with representatives of Australian-based Downer Construction (PNG) Pty Ltd to settle a contractual bill for work done on the Ramu Highway eight years ago.

An internet publication reported yesterday that Downer Construction had indicated filing a lawsuit against the PNG government in Australia for failing to pay an outstanding contract bill of A$31 million (more than K80 million) for the Ramu Highway upgrade completed in 2002.

According to WAtoday.com.au, an online column, the move to file a lawsuit was agreed last Wednesday during Downer’s general meeting.

At the meeting, it was anticipated that Ramu Highway revenue was booked in Downer’s June accounts after the company was satisfied that the amount owed was measurable.

The sum was determined by an international arbitral tribunal last November.

The publication reported that “Downer’s delegation to Port Moresby last month came back empty-handed, and the chatter around Port Moresby is that Downer will have to sue – possibly in the Australian federal court”.

“Even if Downer takes this path, it is hard to predict just what steps will be required to enforce an Australian judgment against the PNG government.”

A company spokesman was quoted as saying: ‘“Downer is continuing its discussions with the PNG government and is confident of reaching an amicable resolution in the coming weeks.”

Collecting a A$31 million bad debt that’s eight years overdue was a top priority for Downer, who had two representatives sent to Port Moresby to negotiate.

The outstanding amount related to a 127km road upgrade completed between 1998 and 2002, when aid funding from the European Development Fund saw Downer engaged to work on the Ramu Highway.

Treasurer O’Neill told The National Downer had approached his office over a bill that had been allowed to escalate because “someone was not doing his job”.

“They have approached my office. We are in discussion. They (government officials) have allowed the bill to escalate to K100 million.”