The Prime Minister has said that full investigation is underway into what actually happened with the Alesco Payroll system that caused the so called glitch on Wednesday 10th January that led to the police stop work protest and the subsequent civil unrest in Port Moresby city and in other parts of the country as well.
Speaking at a recent press conference in Port Moresby, Prime Minister (PM) James Marape informed that the move to suspend the heads of three government departments was to ensure that the full investigation takes place.
“One computer misconfiguration, we will establish whether it was deliberate misconfiguration or oversight by those in Finance, Department of Personnel Management and Treasury,” said the PM.
“That is why heads of these respective departments have been asked to step aside, suspended in the meantime as we get central agencies to go in and have a look at what happened.”
The PM said the investigation will be to establish the reason why the payroll system was not updated which then led to the major pay deduction for public servants last week.
Meanwhile, the Internal Revenue Commission (IRC) Commissioner General Mr. Sam Koim in a statement released over the weekend clarifying the tax issue, said that the Department of Finance, which administers the Alesco Payroll, informed that the Alesco system was not reconfigured on time to make K20, 000 tax free threshold permanent; hence, it reverted to K17, 500 on 1 January 2024, thereby resulting in a reduction in the net pay. This was later identified and resolved.