Probe into alleged wife-basher begins

By JUNIOR UKAHA

NCD Central Assistant Commissioner of Police, Fred Sheekiot has ordered an investigation into a police officer who allegedly assaulted his wife two weeks ago, The National reports.
Although he did not give a deadline for the investigation, Sheekiot said orders had been given to the metropolitan superintendent last week to identify the officer implicated.
He said the change in the metropolitan superintendent’s position would not affect the probe into the assault claim.
The officer, a probationary constable, and said to be attached to the Boroko Police Station allegedly assaulted his wife after she discovered his extra-marital affair last month.
The 26-year-old  woman who is eight months pregnant and expecting twins suffered a broken right arm and a 2cm deep cut on her head after she was allegedly hit with a heavy timber by her policeman husband.
She claimed it was the third time she had
been severely beaten during her one year marriage to the policeman.
Police Internal Affairs Unit (IAU) director, Supt Tony Duwang, when contacted two weeks ago, said the allegation was “quite serious” and he would ensure it was investigated like all other complaints against police officers.
Sheekiot reiterated that appropriate action would be taken pending the investigation

High court dismisses Julian Moti’s case

JULIAN Moti, the man who the previous Somare government ejected from Papua New Guinea five years ago, yesterday won a major court victory in Canberra, Australia, against his sex charges, The National reports.
Its highest court, the High Court, has halted child sex charges against the former Solomon Islands attorney-general who holed up at the old Solomon Islands high commission building in Port Moresby in 2006 until he was secretly flown to Gizo where Solomon Islands police and Ramsi helpers arrested him.
The court yesterday found Moti was illegally deported to Australia.
The court directed that further prosecution would be an abuse of process and should be stayed.
Moti, an Australian citizen, served as Solomons attorney-general between September 2006 and December 2007.
He was suspended between October 2006 and July 2007.
In November 2008, he was charged with seven counts of sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl while outside Australia.
All the charges related to one complainant and allegedly occurred in 1997.
Four charges were alleged to have been conducted in Vanuatu and the other three in New Caledonia.
Chief Justice Robert French and five other judges said the central question was whether those charges should be stayed as an abuse of process.
“The appellant was brought to Australia from Solomon Islands without his consent,” he said in the majority decision.
Officials of the Solomon Islands government deported Moti by putting him on an aircraft bound for Brisbane without power to do so.
Because Australian officials played a role in Moti’s deportation, further prosecution of the charges would be an abuse of process, the court found.
However, the judges rejected claims that money paid by Australian authorities to the complainant and her family brought the administration of justice into disrepute.
The Australian Federal Police paid A$67,500 to the girl and A$81,600 to her family between February 2008 and November 2009.
The payments followed claims by the girl and her father that they would not participate in the prosecution unless they were assisted financially. – AAP

Police ordered to leave logging camps

POLICE Commissioner Tom Kulunga has ordered the withdrawal of all police personnel from logging camps following allegations of abuse of power against them, The National reports.
There was no indication of the number of officers involved, where they would be deployed to and whether it was part of plans to boost police operations elsewhere during the festive period.
But the directive targeted all members of the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary, reservists and auxiliary police officers at the camps.
“I have made this decision to protect and preserve the professional integrity of the organisation and to minimise and manage complaints against police,” Kulunga said.
“The constabulary is supposed to be providing policing services to everyone in Papua New Guinea, regardless of social status, race, religion or sex.”
Kulunga said: “Unfortunately, as we have experienced in the past, when a private organisation takes over what are primary responsibilities of the state such as the provision of transportation, board and lodging, then, there are bound to be instances of bias or favouritism towards the sponsor.”
He said any future deployment to logging sites would be “strictly sanctioned by the police hierarchy in strict compliance with the constabulary’s standard operational procedures”.
He said it was necessary to ensure police ope­rations, when requested or warranted at logging camps, were “impartially carried out within the confines of the law and in a fair, transparent and accountable manner”.
Kulunga also placed an indefinite ban on the hire of private vehicles by police.
“A previous ban issued by former commissioners Gari Baki and Anthony Wagambie is still in effect but has been largely ignored,” he said.
“As of this notice, no member of the constabulary is authorised to hire private vehicles.
“The commissioner of police and, only in his absence, any one of the two deputy commissioners authorise the hire of private vehicles if there is a need to,” Kulunga said.
He advised private vehicle hire companies to note that claims would only be paid if they had been authorised by the police commissioner.
“There will be no exceptions,” he said.
Kulunga said all vehicles on hire to police were to be returned within seven days from the publication of his notice.
He said police would not pay any hire car bills after the seven-day grace period.
Meanwhile, police had stepped up patrols on most urban centres in anticipation of the festive season.
In the National Capital District and Central, Assistant Commissioner Fred Sheekiot said manpower and resources would be mobilised for special security operations.
“The heightened security alert is necessary to maintain law and order in the city during the parliament session and the Supreme Court reference ruling on Dec 9,” Sheekiot said.
He said police recruits and staff from the Bomana Police College would join operational units.
Police attention is also focused on the court case on Monday against Deputy Prime Minister Belden Namah and Justice Minister Dr Allan Marat

Government t gives K649 million to fund free education policy

THE government has allocated K649 million to support its major policy initiative of free education, The National reports.
And tertiary students will be happy with the government’s decision to re-introduce Natschol – national scholarship – which will provide 10,000 students with living allowances.
Treasury and Finance Minister Don Polye, in presenting the 2012 budget yesterday, announced the funding of K649 million, including the K300 million set aside in the 2011 supplementary budget and K47 million in education infrastructure.
He said it would fund tuition-free education up to Grade 10 and a 75% subsidy for Grades 11 and 12.
“This funding also triggers additional support of K27 million from the Australian aid programme.
“Education is the key to our future and for participation by all Papua New Guineans in the modern economy,” he said.
But simply reducing fees is not enough to invest in our children’s future.
The minister said the 2012 budget would pay for 6,700 new teachers to work in the provinces, and a K13 million increase in the basic education function grant to provinces that would support K24.5 million for teachers colleges, technical and vocational schools.
Polye said it also provided a substantial increase in recurrent funding to universities of nearly K10 million.
In addition, the development budget would support the state-owned universities.
In particular the government would assist the:

• University of PNG (K43.5 million – including the law school building and a science building);
• University of Technology (K8 million – including a Petroleum and Petrochemical engineering school);
• University of Natural Science and Resources (K18 million – including a library and staff housing); and
• University of Goroka (K12 million counterpart funding for a Chinese loan of K30 million for a dormitory extension and trade skills scholarships worth K20 million).

Polye said free education was of little value if the quality was not the best and the next challenge was to lift the standard of education across PNG.
“In total, the government allocates a minimum of K1,954 million or 18.5% of the total recurrent and development budgets to education in 2012,” he said.
He said taking into account the K305 million for education in the supplementary budget, the government had lifted education expenditure by a very substantial 30% in comparison to the 2011 budget

External financing of the 2012 budget

In 2012, seven official development partners will provide K1,390 million grant financing to PNG, The National reports.
The Australia government’s aid component will be the highest through AusAID at 78% or K1.09 billion  while the rest of the help will come in as: United Nations (6%), NZAID (4%), European Union (4%), JICA (3%) and world Bank (1%).
Grant financing is estimated to allocate around K851.7 million (61%) of projects and programmes to the seven MTDP enablers.
Most of it also from AusAID.
In 2012, concessional loan draw downs are estimated to be K479.4 million, which comprises the draw-downs of 23 ongoing and new loans (ADB, World Bank, JICA and China).
The majority of concessional loans target transport rehabilitation and maintenance

National Development Bank gets K130 million

THE National Development Bank got a huge recapitalisation of K130 million in the budget, The National reports.
It will enable the NDB to roll out its micro-bank plans in the provinces.
It is understood that the bank had specifically requested for the amount through Agriculture Minister Sir Puka Temu who tabled its submission in cabinet a month ago.
At a NDB director’s dinner at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Port Moresby, Sir Puka had promised the
bank that he would take up the matter after he was briefed of its record performance of generating profit this year since it’s restructure in 2007 and the first profit in 2009.
At the budget lock-up yesterday, the executive di­rector of the Institute of National Affairs Paul Barker said he hoped that there would be a careful scrutiny of the bank because of the huge allocation.
In response, Finance Minister Don Polye said there would be specific directions given to the bank to ensure that it operated under stringent guidelines.
It was also raised that a lot of money was given to political cronies by the bank in the past which were not recovered.
NDB executive manager (accounting and finance) Moses Liu said NDB had completely turned around with independent directors on the board and good management resulting in it being profitable.
He said the 2011 financial results would show that the bank had made a huge turn-around to record its highest net profit since its inception in 1967.
The budget allocation of K130 million would be broken down as follows: Agriculture credit support – K100 million, Tourism credit support – K5 million, Local business guarantee scheme – K10 million, Small Medium Enterprises development programme – K10 million and Fisheries credit support – K5 million.
One of the initiatives the NDB and wanted to introduce early next year under the K100 million submission was the re-introduction of the Stret Pasin Stoa concept.
This is where a husband and wife team manage a shop (mini-supermarket) built by NDB and later own it after NDB has recovered its cost

Electoral Commission unhappy with budget allocation

Electoral Commissioner Andrew Trawen is unhappy with the K330.5 million allocation for the 2012 general election announced by Treasurer Don Polye yesterday, The National reports.
He said in reality, the commission was being given K180 million when it had asked for K240 million for the July 2012 election.
Trawen said it was because the election budget included allocations for the three disciplinary forces.
He said the K180 million was manageable “given that some of the areas need to be shelved”.
“I’m not happy that EC was funded K180 million but we can cut down on some areas in order to conduct a free and fair democratic election,” he said.
He said it was important the election was conducted properly  and that the people elected their representatives.
Trawen said the biggest problem with elections in Papua New Guinea was the geo­graphy of the country, “which requires a lot of money”.
But, he said, despite the limited funding, he would able to conduct a fair election with the help from the Defence Force, Police and Correctional Service.
In announcing the K330.5 million election budget, Polye said the 2012 election funding “is more than the K61 million allocation for the 2007 general election, an increase of more than K269.5 million”.
He said funding for next’s election included salaries, security and logistics.
He said to conduct a fair and free democratic election, “security will be increased throughout the country”.
He said the allowances would include more than 700 special and regular policemen and women and another 400 police recruits who would be engaged in the operations and for the inclusion of another 3,650 reservists
Polye said among the police officers would be 650 defence force personnel and 250 Correctional Service personnel.
Logistics are expected to cover the use and hire of defence helicopters and planes, including those that will be hired from private companies