Nature at your service

Tubusereia Primary School teacher Michael Tau was more than happy to get himself dirty while assisting PNG environment goodwill ambassador and Miss PNG Rachel Sapery James plant a mangrove seedling, The National reports.

Students, teachers and staff yesterday from the Central school off Magi Highway joined staff from the Department of Environment and Conservation and corporate partners Steamships Trading Ltd and Trukai Industries plant mangroves to launch World Environment Day. Centred on the theme “nature at your service”, this global event will be celebrated on Sunday. – Nationalpic by JASON GIMA WURI

 

Pacific countries ready to sign EU pact

PACIFIC countries in the  Pacific, African Carib- bean Pacific (ACP) group are ready to join PNG and Fiji in signing the economic partnership agreement (EPA) with the European Union (EU), The National reports.

Pacific ACP countries have again stressed their commitments to conclude negotiations on EPA with the EU by the end of the year, as reported by Solomon Star newspaper yesterday.

“However, that deadline could only be achieved, if there was flexibility from both sides,” the Pacific lead spokesperson on EPA negotiations and Tonga’s minister for trade, Lisiate Akolo said.

The deadline for negotiations was December 2007 but the Pacific region failed to meet the timeline because it was not able to strike an acceptable free trade deal with the EU.

Instead, Fiji and PNG signed interim EPAs with the EU in 2009.

“I am pleased to inform you that interim agreement was ratified by the PNG parliament last  Wednesday and the implementation of the agreement is well advanced,” Akolo said in his progress report to the ACP’s 93rd session of the council of ministers meeting underway in Brussels, Belgium.

After seven years of negotiating the EPA the region seeks to bring negotiations to a conclusion.

“We believe the region is now prepared and ready to do this.

“A recent meeting of Pacific ACP in Apia, Samoa, and ministers agreed that this would be the overarching priority for the region in 2011.

“But any conclusion will require all parties to show flexibility and be mutually committed to undertaking the work necessary to conclude the agreement,” Akolo said.

He said the rest of the 12 Pacific ACP countries reaffirmed their desire to conclude a comprehensive EPA as a single region.

The Pacific ACP EPA 2011 Strategy was adopted by trade ministers in Samoa, which outlined a work programme for the conclusion of the EPA.

For PNG, Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Don Polye has completed their agreement with his EU counterpart in March.

 

Sleeping student hacked to death

By ANGELINE KARIUS

 

CLASSES at the Mt Diamond Adventist Secondary School in Central have been suspended following the brutal killing of a student, The National reports.

The Grade 10 male student, who was not named, was hacked to death in his sleep early on Sunday morning.

Central provincial education board chairman Titus Romano Hatagen said yesterday the student was attacked by a group of men on the verandah of his home, which is located along the road to the school.

His body was chopped to pieces, Hatagen added.

NCD metropolitan commander Supt Joseph Tondop confirmed the death yesterday but could not provide details.

The central education division was also not able to provide further details about the circumstances leading to the student’s death.

However, Hatagen said he had cancelled classes for three days until Thursday.

“Due to safety reasons and fear among the staff and students, the provincial education board has approved cancellation of classes,” he said.

He said the board expected students, who had left the school, to return tomorrow.

Hatagen assured parents that police were investigating the killing and were closely monitoring developments in the surrounding communities.

“I appeal to parents not to withdraw their children from the school and staff and students should not interfere with investigations,” he said.

The Mt Diamond Adventist Secondary School principal could not be reached for comments.

The boarding school is located in the Kairuku-Hiri electorate, inland from Tubusereia village, off the Magi Highway.

 

Bougainvillean local shot while visiting mother

By STEPHANIE ELIZAH

 

SOUTH Bougainville police commander Paul Kamuai yesterday said a civilian was shot and wounded on Sunday evening at Mongai village in Konnou, South Bougainville, The National reports.

Kamuai said Isaac Malabus, 24, of a mixed Muisuru and Mongai parentage, was recovering at Buka General Hospital after he was rushed to Buka from Buin at 3am yesterday.

“Malabus went to Mongai to vi-sit his mother when he was confronted by five former Mekamui combatants who are now followers of former commander and gang leader Damien Koike,” he said.

“The criminals ordered Malabus to sit down and questioned him on the whereabouts of freedom fighters in the area.

“When he said he did not know anything, he was shot below the knee and stomach,” Kamuai said.

He said tension among communities in the Konnou constituency was high.

“Criminal elements do not normally go to Mongai because the area is known to have its own home guards.

“The villagers are living in fear because the criminals crossed into Mongai territory deep in the night, searching for the village chief and his home guards,” Kamuai said.

In a related incident, Kamuai reported Buin police had received reports that a former police scout was killed in Konnou last Wednesday.

“Our local sources said the alleged murder occurred deep inside Koike’s territory, next to Siniminoi alluvial gold mine, Koike’s economic base,” Kamuai said.

He said the victim was known to police because, during his time as a home guard at Mongai, he was a police scout helping the South Bougainville police.

“In 2008, he was wounded by an AR15 at Mogoroi, got treated at the Buka hospital and, on discharge, went deep into Koike’s territory.

“I cannot confirm if the former scout was killed,” Kamuai said.

 

Milne Bay starts operations to rid illegals

MILNE Bay provincial government last week started a special operation to remove all foreigners illegally working and living in the province, The National reports.

Customs commissioner Gary Juffa, who was in the province for the start of the operation, said the exercise was targeting people who breached Papua New Guinea’s migration and labour laws.

“The aim of the operation is to scrutinise foreign workers living and working in Milne Bay and also to ensure they comply with labour and migration laws,” he said.

“Time and time again we hear and read of illegal foreign business and foreigners illegally living in and working in PNG,” Juffa said.

“We must protect the interests of PNG and its people,” he said.

The two-week operation was spearheaded by the provincial administration, customs, police and the office of labour and migration.

Juffa commended the Milne Bay provincial administration for its initiative, saying customs would work closely with the administration to ensure the exercise was a success. 

He said a number of foreigners had already been deported from the province after they were found to be illegally working and living there.

He said, so far, Milne Bay and East New Britain were the only provinces who were actually removing illegal foreigners and business working or operating there.

While in the province, Juffa attended a gathering hosted by the Border Development Authority to discuss trans-boundary issues.

 

Hijacked highway?

Transparency International PNG is concerned with the state-sanctioned construction of the Kiunga-Hiritano Highway through immense tracts of Western province land covered by the controversial special purpose agriculture business leases (SABLs).

Chairman of TIPNG Lawrence Stephens was commenting on the recent media reports of arrangements for construction of the Trans National Highway: "There is huge concern that the leases were improperly executed, that they will result in large-scale logging without providing large scale agricultural development and that the landowners are not adequately informed of the implications of these agreements supposedly executed on their behalf.

"Now the reports suggest that the leaseholders are involved in arrangements to build a major national highway which will cost the government nothing.

“The people of Western and Gulf provinces deserve to share in the prosperity of PNG.

“More importantly they need to benefit from resources in these provinces.

“A good road linking Kiunga to Port Moresby would be of great benefit to the people.

“But how do we achieve this at no cost to government unless we are giving some people the right to large areas of timber resources which, before the SPABLs were issued, belonged to whole communities?

“With the moratorium on new leases and the call to investigate existing leases there is a need to quickly ensure that the commission of inquiry is up and running to determine whether these SABL’s have been properly granted.”

Stephens raised the specific concern with reports that landowners have agreed to “trade off” their resources for access to roads in agreeing to a developer to harvest forest within the road corridors of the transnational highway.

 “What will happen to the prime virgin forest that the landowners are trading off?

“Will all the landowners be fairly compensated by the developer not just a select few?

“How wide is the corridor of tree harvesting along a 600km road?

“Gulf and Western povince people have the right to know what is planned.

“They are familiar with plans which see them lose their resources with no development to show for it." 

TI PNG, according to Stephens, remains concerned that “for too long our rural people based have not benefited from their resources and many unscrupulous developers have taken advantage of them. If this is to stop a true agricultural industry must be fostered, SABL's must not be a means for the bypassing of strict forestry regulations”.

Stephens reiterated the need to immediately conduct the commission of inquiry into the SABLs so as to rectify any possible irregularities.

 

True partnership

Hospital corpsman seaman Carmen Alfaro, assigned to the amphibious transport dock ship USS Cleveland (LPD7), reading to children during a Pacific Partnership civil action project in Lae, The National reports.

Pacific Partnership is a five-month humanitarian assistance initiative that will also make port visits to Tonga, Vanuatu, Timor-Leste and Micronesia.

During the past five years, it has provided medical, dental, educational and preventive medicine services to more than 220,500 people and completed more than 160 engineering projects in 16 countries. – USNavypic