Esteemed Dr Sam Yockopua will quit if health boss not sacked

NEWS DESK | FM100 / PNG Today

PORT MORESBY – One of Papua New Guinea’s most senior doctors is ready to resign from his job if the government and health department do not respond to a petition to sack the health secretary.

The chief emergency physician at Port Moresby General Hospital and secretary of the National Doctors Association, Dr Sam Yockopua, said he will be the first doctor to resign.

Dr Yockopua said doctors have had enough of ignorance from the senior executive management in the health department who have failed to address PNG’s deteriorating health system and services.

“I will be the first highly trained medical specialist to resign if they won’t respond to our petition to remove the Health Secretary within a seven days ultimatum starting next Tuesday,” he said.

Dr Yockopua the petition for the immediate removal of the health secretary as well as other senior executive managers in the health sector on Monday at 4:30pm.

The frustrated doctor announced his intention following updates from his team that Port Moresby General Hospitals and other public hospitals around the country had no iodine, no crepe bandages, no orthopaedic padding, no gauze bandages and no other medicines.

He said this information came from his team on the ground trying to save lives under painstaking difficult conditions.

Dr Yockopua called on the government to sack the health secretary who he said ‘does not know his job’.

Go to this link for more: https://asopa.typepad.com/asopa_people/2019/08/esteemed-dr-sam-yockopua-will-quit-if-health-boss-not-sacked.html

K2 billion deficit in budget: Basil

By HELEN TARAWA - The National

TREASURER Sam Basil, pictured, says the 2019 budget has a K2 billion deficit due to defaults in collection.
“This year we have run a deficit budget of K2bil. We have budgetary support financing from China Development Bank of K1 billion ($US300 million) and other initiatives through other financers such as Credit Swiss,” Basil said yesterday. He said that from January to the time the Marape-Government took over, the budget support process had not taken place.
“We‘ve taken over the baton and we are pushing for those budget support to come in.
“Also, we’d like to make it known that our collections for this year from our non-tax revenue and dividends, we have come short by K500 million.
“Those are the pressures that have been added on to Treasury and to Internal Revenue Commission and PNG Customs Services – to collect more money to fund the budget.
“We are still pushing for the China Development Bank financing and Credit Swiss.
“We do understand that we are short of K500 million and if we have to take some corrective measures, we will announce them in the next sitting of Parliament. “At this very trying and hard times, we do realise the shortfall of dividends and non-tax revenues that have reported in the Mid-Year Economic Outlook Report, that we are under by K500 million.”
Basil said if there was underreporting of K18 billion, the tax agents’ creditability must be questioned and if they were operating within the code of conduct in filing for their clients. “While commending IRC for its efforts in recovering the monies, we will look at Exiting Act and regulations and penalties of IRC,” he said.
“We want to make it harder for defaulters, especially those tax agents that are committing the same offence cover and over, depriving the state of its revenue that we should be collecting.”

Go to this link for more: https://www.thenational.com.pg/k2bil-deficit-in-budget-basil/

PM: PNG has potential to export livestock to Asia

By LULU MARK - The National

Papua New Guinea has great potential to export livestock and organic food to the Asian market and the world, Prime Minister James Marape said yesterday.
He opened the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) performance veterinary (PVS) gap analysis mission workshop hosted by the PNG National Agriculture Quarantine and Inspection Authority (Naqia) which would help improve the care of livestock.
Marape, who is also the care-taker Minister for Agriculture and Livestock, said it was a meeting of a smaller presence of people but in his view one of the greatest that could take place in the country because agriculture and livestock would unlock the wealth of this country.
He said with 460km of arable land, year-round rainfall and accessibility to water, it was time to shift the minds away from just focusing on oil, gas and mining, which were heavily dependent on global price fluctuations.
“Let us focus on diversifying into agriculture and livestock,” he said, explaining that it was a sustainable means of making money where all citizens could be engaged in.
In terms of food, he said, whatever produced in Australia or PNG would not be adequate to supply the market place in the region.
He said in light of climate change, increasing population and more land becoming not user- friendly for agriculture, food security would be a global issue in the future.
When that happened, Marape said, people would be shifting towards unconventional ways of cultivating food and harvesting animal products.
However, he said PNG would be the answer to food security in the region and be known by the world as an organic food hub. “Our region, the immediate Asia as well as greater Asia, has about four billion people and every day they need to eat and that food must be supplied by a producer somewhere.”
Marape said Papua New Guinea would also support other Pacific Island countries that did not have enough land.

Go to this link for more: https://www.thenational.com.pg/pm-png-has-potential-to-export-livestock-to-asia/

Lewas skipper wins CPL award for role

Posted on The National

PAPUA New Guinea Lewas captain Kaia Arua won the 2019 City Pharmacy Limited medal for the best player in women’s cricket.
The 28-year-old left-arm bowler was awarded the medal after edging out Lewas teammates Ravini Oa and Brenda Tau.
A gracious Arua, in her acknowledgement, thanked her teammates and the coaching staff for their confidence in her role in the women’s national team.
She is taking a lead role in the Yahama Cassowaries at the women’s T20 Smash cricket tournament in Port Moresby.
The tournament started last week and is in its second week.
The semifinals and finals are scheduled for this weekend at the Amini Park.
The T20 Smash will also provide sufficient match practice for the Lewas who leave for Scotland.
Arua and Oa will head the Lewas’ campaign at the T20 World Cup qualifier in Scotland later this month.

Go to this link for more: https://www.thenational.com.pg/lewas-skipper-wins-cpl-award-for-role/

K18bil in taxes unreported

By HELEN TARAWA - The National

THE Internal Revenue Commission (IRC) has disclosed under-reporting of taxes worth K18 billion by 127 companies in 2016.
IRC acting Commissioner-General Dr Alois Daton revealed yesterday that underreporting was one of the discrepancies that was found in the initiatives undertaken to recover money.
Daton said of the 127 companies, 96 were large companies and 31 were small to medium enterprises.
Treasurer Sam Basil commended IRC for its efforts, saying that this was a good, promising plan that it had undertaken to recover a targetted K1bil this year.
“This is welcoming news but recovering those monies would be difficult,” he said.
“We will stand with IRC to ensure that their funds in the budget would be available to fund auditors and tax inspectors to front up to the companies and bring in the much-needed funds to contribute to the Waigani account.
“I commend IRC for turning their spotlight on that and the involvement of provincial governments, we would like to close the gap with engaging them.”
Daton said IRC still had 2017, 2018 and 2019 to go through to find out if there were also records of under-reporting of taxes.
“We have done some analysis around the information returns which are being lodged by tax payers and we have identified underreporting,” he said.
“Our team has worked on underreporting and the value of it is K18 billion which is only for 2016 records.”
Daton said between now and October, IRC would be talking to those taxpayers, matching the data they had and the taxpayers would be asked to come in to confirm it.
“If there is a mistake, we will make the adjustments which will be made by October and in November-December we are going to bring that K1b additional revenue.
“There will be penalties once we have done all the adjustments and everything, penalties for underreporting.
“The message that we are going to deliver to the taxpayers is that they must be making full and honest disclosure and be honest in their dealings with IRC.
“Monies collected from underreporting will give us about K1bil but that’s just a conservative figure from about K5 billion that we can collect from this exercise,” he said.
“From this K18 billion, we hope to raise about K1billion towards the end of the year.
“And this K1billion is additional to K8.6b that IRC has been tasked to raise this year for the 2019 budget.”
Daton said the second initiative was to look at IRC’s K5bil debt recovery.
“We hope that by talking to taxpayers and talking to tax agents, we will look at working with taxpayers, ensure that if they to pay their base tax we will forgive their penalties,” he said.
“We are going to take to tax agents and stakeholders as well to find out whether they come up with suggestions, forgiving penalties, collect base tax so we can reduce the debt of K5 billion we are carrying.
“We will call a tax agency liaison group meeting where both the Treasurer and vice-treasurers will be present.
“We want to stress home the fact that tax agents and their clients must be honest in their dealing and pay their right amount of tax so that Government does not lose out on any money.”

Go to this link for more: https://www.thenational.com.pg/k18bil-in-taxes-unreported/

Students to pay 50-75 per cent of adult bus fare: ICCC boss

Posted on The National

ALL students are supposed to pay 50 to 75 per cent of the maximum adult PMV (Private Motor Vehicle) bus-fare, says Independent Consumer and Competition Commission (ICCC) chief executive officer Paulus Ain.
Ain told The National the consumer price control arrangement allowed for students to pay below the maximum fare chargeable by operators.
Ain said that applied to students from the primary schools to the tertiary institutions.
“In the current price control arrangement that we have in-place, ICCC provides concession fares for students from primary to tertiary institutions which we consider are reasonable for everyone across the country,” Ain said.
“For example, the adult fare for all NCD (National Capital District) routes is K1, therefore 50 percent and 75 per cent of the maximum fare is 50t and 80t respectively.
“The current ICCC’s approved fares is applied to all operators providing PMV services along declared routes throughout the country.”
Ain said that as a regulator, it also considered the high cost of running a PMV business and could not totally remove busfare payments for students as had been the requests lately by members of the public.
“We also consider the high costs of running the PMV businesses and associated costs of wear and tear operators pay during the period of operation while at the same time trying to make a profit. We are of the view that provision of transport services to the travelling public is an essential service.
“The operators provide this service without subsidy support from anyone including the Government.
“Recently, we also received views from some PMV operators requesting to increase students’ fares to adult fares.
“This is something that will be addressed during the current review into pricing for the PMV and Taxi service industry.
“The PMV fares is set only for declared routes and urban routes through the country. The distance is one factor that attributed to the increased PMV fares.”.
The Independent Consumer and Competition Commission sets the PMV fares for declared routes and urban routes annually through a national gazette notice.
The PMV fares schedule can be obtained from the ICCC office.

Go to this link for more: https://www.thenational.com.pg/students-to-pay-50-75-per-cent-of-adult-bus-fare-iccc-boss/

Student loan plan set

By HELEN TARAWA - The National

PRIME Minister James Marape, pictured, has announced the Government’s approval of an endowment fund, part of which will assist students obtain study loans from next year.
The prime minister made the announcement at the closing of the 2019 PNG Update Forum on Friday where he informed students, academics and the public of decisions by the National Executive Council (NEC), including the endowment fund.
“Two nights ago (on Wednesday evening) in Cabinet we made a critical decision on policy to give an indication as to how our state-owned entities (SOEs) would split their revenues,” he said.
“We’ve indicated that 50 per cent of the revenues will come to budget support, we’re putting capital to 20 per cent for the SOE’s own expenditures.
“And 10 per cent of the revenue we are looking at community assistance programmes, especially churches. Another seven per cent will now start what past governments have talked about – saving for the future through the Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) concept – our government will make it happen.”
Marape said seven per cent of every earnings from the SOEs will go towards the SWF setup. “I want to link the SWF to the students assistance programme going into the future, so these are some of the decisions that have been made,” he said.
Marape said in order to benefit from the loan scheme, interested students will have to be registered under the National Identity and Civil Registry and they must have an acceptance letter from the institution they last attended.
He said they would enter into a soft loan which the students can repay for the rest of their lives.
“Some of these discussions when we announce them in September, I want you to pick a copy and tell me if this is workable and this is not workable,” he said.
“The only thing that we will not change is the 10 Commandments that Moses received on Mt Sinai.
“Our constitution is possibly changeable, our organic laws are changeable and our Acts of Parliament are definitely changeable so when I look through them, the policies of government are really the ones we can change at any time, we can change to policies that can work for us,” Marape said.
In January, Higher Education secretary Fr Jan Czuba said the department was developing loan packages for students.
He said the loan scheme was to help students to be able to afford university and college education and help ease the financial struggle of parents, especially those from rural areas.
Czuba said that scheme was a priority for the government and so had to be funded under the national budget. In June, Higher Education Research, Science and Technology Minister Nick Kuman said he wanted to reduce tuition fees for tertiary institutions to allow financially disadvantage students to enrol.
Kuman said he wanted students, especially those from remote areas, to attend tertiary institutions they had qualified for with affordable fees.
“I will pursue the tertiary loan scheme for students to apply for loans to pay for their fees and when they work after graduating, they can repay their loans,” he said.
“Currently, the fees are too high that bright children from remote areas throughout the country cannot afford, so they remain back in the villages. With the tertiary loan scheme, it will enable them to afford the fees for their desired institutions to pursue their goals.”

Go to this link for more: https://www.thenational.com.pg/student-loan-plan-set/