PNGBLOGS

CANBERRA TIMES The Gillard Government must stop paying huge salaries to aid officials working in poor countries, Australia's main foreign aid group said yesterday.  The strong reaction from the Australian Council for International Development came after Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd said the huge salaries paid to Australians administering aid programs would be trimmed by one-quarter. He confirmed the Government would axe 257 long-term positions from 11 different programs over two years. Council executive director Marc Purcell said reducing advisers must be the first step as part of a larger reform and questioning of what made foreign aid effective. Opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Julie Bishop said the high level of advisers' salaries had been raised with her by heads of state and foreign ministers from the region. ''This is a matter of concern to them, that Australian aid is being absorbed by payments to the officials in charge of the aid program an

CANBERRA TIMES The Gillard Government must stop paying huge salaries to aid officials working in poor countries, Australia's main foreign aid group said yesterday.  The strong reaction from the Australian Council for International Development came after Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd said the huge salaries paid to Australians administering aid programs would be trimmed by one-quarter. He confirmed the Government would axe 257 long-term positions from 11 different programs over two years. Council executive director Marc Purcell said reducing advisers must be the first step as part of a larger reform and questioning of what made foreign aid effective. Opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Julie Bishop said the high level of advisers' salaries had been raised with her by heads of state and foreign ministers from the region. ''This is a matter of concern to them, that Australian aid is being absorbed by payments to the officials in charge of the aid progr

OP/ED The 11th Mining and Petroleum Conference in Sydney, Australia kicked off yesterday. And in a packed room, PNG’s Oil Search Limited, a major partner in the LNG project, shocked the experts and government officials including ministers from both countries that it has spent a whopping K11.931 billion in oil benefits between 1992 and 2009. And that is nothing on the ground to show for this money, the company says. That is the verdict from oil industry supremo Dr Peter Botten of Oil Search Limited who said there was “no significant appropriate improvements in living standards” had occurred to Papua New Guineans from billions of kina received by landowners, provincial governments and the national government as resource benefits over the last 17 years. Today we are told some 200 people have died from cholera in Western Province. Apart from Cholera, TB, Malaria, HIV/AIDS, Cancer and many other diseases are killing our people. The National Department of Health has admitted that our health

OP/ED The 11th Mining and Petroleum Conference in Sydney, Australia kicked off yesterday. And in a packed room, PNG’s Oil Search Limited, a major partner in the LNG project, shocked the experts and government officials including ministers from both countries that it has spent a whopping K11.931 billion in oil benefits between 1992 and 2009. And that is nothing on the ground to show for this money, the company says. That is the verdict from oil industry supremo Dr Peter Botten of Oil Search Limited who said there was “no significant appropriate improvements in living standards” had occurred to Papua New Guineans from billions of kina received by landowners, provincial governments and the national government as resource benefits over the last 17 years. Today we are told some 200 people have died from cholera in Western Province. Apart from Cholera, TB, Malaria, HIV/AIDS, Cancer and many other diseases are killing our people. The National Department of Health has admitted that our heal