Monday 6 June 2011

Hides threat is real

By MOHAMMAD BASHIR

ESSO Highlands Ltd (EHL), operator of the PNG LNG project yesterday confirmed that early works at Hides 1 and 4 have resumed but landowner leaders of the Tuguba tribe’s Council of Chiefs are mobilising to resort to force to get what they claim to be owed to them by the government.
“Works has resumed at Hides,” EHL’s Public Affairs Manager Miles Shaw stated in a one liner following enquiries by the Post-Courier without elaborating.
Following no response to two petitions in May and June to the government and developers, the Chiefs have resolved to ‘handle it their way’ and most have already moved to their villages in the last 48 hours.
After waiting to meet government leaders on Saturday at the Holiday Inn to no avail, the leaders have served what they called the ‘final call’ to Acting Prime Minister Sam Abal and developers EHL and Oil Search yesterday.
Council of Chief’s president Thomas Potabe described the lack of courtesy and protocol by the government to their demands including that of the immediate family of late Chief Himuni Homoko as amounting to disdain and contempt.
Their demands include;
* Tuguba Council of Chiefs demand their initial 3 cm thick submission to be resurrected and issues raised therein addressed before the late Himuni Homoko’s body is sent home. In so doing, they demand that the children of the late Homoko be made permanently part of the issues raised in that submission whatever may be the end result.
* State to pay all outstanding MOA commitments for Hides to Porgera Electricity Project from the Department of Petroleum and Energy and National Planning and Monitoring which includes all projects included in the Hides PDL 1 Agreement signed in 1996 and reviewed in 1997.
* The State to pay all outstanding Ministerial Commitments during the Kokopo UBSA and the various Hides PDL 1 and PDL 7 LBBSAs and elsewhere.
* The state to pay all outstanding seed capital, MOA project monies and infrastructure development grants due under various agreements.
There were several other demands that the landowners wanted to have addressed.

source: http://www.postcourier.com.pg/20110607/business01.htm

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