A lot of shops, supermarkets and the major businesses that suffered at the hands of the opportunists on Wednesday during the unrest in the Port Moresby city have lost over K100 million worth of good and items, which cannot be replaced soon without some kind of government help. The Governor for the National Capital District (NCD) Powes Parkop in a press conference this morning in Port Moresby, said that this sort of help should come in the form of financial assistance and improving security in the city. Mr. Parkop said that he is glad that the government has put in…
Author: Emmanuel MAIPE
The Prime Minister has declared a State of Emergency in the city of Port Moresby to give time for the city to recover and also investigations to be conducted in what had happened that led to the riots yesterday. Prime Minister James Marape said the recommendation put forth by the National Security Advisory Committee and the National Security Council was to have a 14 day period for the SOE. The Deputy Police Commissioner Operations Donald Yamasobi has been made Controller of the SOE and pushed to Acting Police Commissioner while Deputy Commissioner Sam Kua has been made Yamasobi’s second. Police…
Prime Minister (PM) James Marape is expected to announce to the country this afternoon whether a State of Emergency (SOE) will be declared in the city of Port Moresby with tough security measures to be put in place. The PM this morning in his address to the nation, said that the actions by the public, mostly opportunists yesterday, were uncalled for and unfortunate. However, he assured the public and business houses that there is now control in the city with additional police manpower flown in from Lae last night to assist police officers and Papua New Guinea Defence Force (PNGDF)…
The main shopping center of the Gerehu suburb in Port Moresby today fell to the hands of opportunists that broke in and stole everything, evening setting fire to them. People, ranging from little children to teenagers to moms and dads, and even some elderly folks were seen running in and looting all of the shops, risking their lives stealing items ranging from food to white goods, and with no police in site to control the situation, people ran riot for over an hour. The looting is part of a string of rampages and lootings in the capital city after some…
The Minister for International Trade and Investment has come out to respond to comments made by the head of the Papua New Guinea (PNG) Institute of National Affairs (INA) on the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) initiative of the government, which stated that SEZs encourage corruption. Minister Richard Maru said that the comments made by the PNG INA Director, Mr. Paul Barker in one of the daily newspapers yesterday, Monday 08th January, was simply misleading. “If the SEZs are encouraging corruption, then why have countries like China, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and t Philippines chosen SEZs as the major driver for sustainable and…
PNG Power Limited (PPL) could have restored full electricity supply on the Ramu grid to the upper Highlands region sooner, had it not been for landowners preventing workers from detecting a recent fault that disrupted power supply to five areas last week. According to the State-owned power company, some of the transmission line towers cannot be remotely accessed on the PNG Power system to locate a fault and therefore, PPL teams must physically access them to find out where a fault might be along the power grid. However, when PPL teams went in to investigate some of those towers, they…
Teams from PNG Power Limited (PPL) are currently working hard replacing High Voltage (HV) transmission lines that were apparently damaged over the weekend and shutting power to Wau in the Morobe province. According to PPL, the work on the lines and poles will take at least a day to fix before power can be restored to the residences, business houses and public institutions in the township. The replacing of the HV lines follows reports of people apparently cutting and stealing the transmission lines, while in another incident, vehicles ran into two separate power poles, affecting power supply along the Zenag…
Fuel consumers can now breathe a sigh of relief with the Independent Consumer and Competitions Commission (ICCC) announcing that the prices for petrol, diesel and kerosene have dropped for the month of January. According to ICCC, the drop in fuel prices will be experienced right throughout the country starting today, Monday 08th January 2024. The Commission said the drop in the prices of all three petroleum products was due to the average decrease in international crude oil prices in the month of December. 2023. The average crude oil price was mainly attributed to the increase supply amid heightened geopolitical tension…
The efforts by Ok Tedi Mining Limited (OTML) put in towards protecting the environment and the communities it operates in, resulted in the mining company exceeding its environmental protection target in 2023. This was revealed just recently in a statement by OTML, stating that it has exceeded its annual sediment dredge target of 10 Million Cubic Meters (Mm3) and its rehabilitation target of 35 hectares for 2023 at its Bige Operations, which is located 125km from the mine site at the Star Mountains of Western province. The Bige Operations dredged 10.3 Mm3 of river sediments and rehabilitated 40 hectares (ha)…
It’s the start of a brand-new year and the Internal Revenue Commission (IRC) is already advising the general taxpayers through a notice that if they wish to engage someone to attend to their taxation matters this year, they should start consulting a registered Tax Agent or the IRC for assistance. Also, any unregistered tax agents are advised to apply to IRC to legally register as a Tax Agent before they can start providing any taxation services to their clients. These services include Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN) Registration, Certificate of Compliance (CoC), Lodgement of Tax Returns, Payment of Tax Liabilities, Objections,…