PNGBLOGS

By Gary Jepulamani For months the O’Neill government through its mouthpiece Ben Micah and confirmed by the Prime Minister himself, has said that the government cannot afford to keep subsidising Air Niugini and PNG Power Ltd. They presented this argument as their strongest rationale for wanting to offload at least 49% of those operations to private shareholders. So what’s going on with Telikom? From an investment standpoint, Telikom is a no brainer. No private investor in their right mind would sink money into a state owned enterprise that they don’t expect to get a healthy profit from. Amongst all PNG SOEs, Telikom is one of the least attractive investment propositions, which is why the government is not even bothering to put it up for sale right now. In the world of competition, Telikom is legendary for constantly missing the boat. It lost out on both the mobile phone and the internet waves. Its data modems required special registration and instructions few people co

PETER O'NEILL FOLLOWS THE SUCCESSFUL MODEL OF ADOLF HITLER AND BENITO MUSSOLINI USING INFRASTRUCTURE CONSTRUCTION TO WIN PEOPLE’S HEARTS AND MINDS   By Martin Haku Peter ONeill’s oratory abilities are not even close to matching that of Papua New Guinea’s Founding Father Michael Somare and of many current highlands politicians.  ONeill is not even on the same planet as Adolf Hitler in terms of charisma and the ability to mesmerise the audience.  Comparing Peter ONeill with Adolf Hitler seems bizarre on the face of it but looking deeper, there is one thing about Papua New Guinea’s current Prime Minister that follows the Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy strategy for winning the hearts of the people, as it took place in the years between World Wars I and II.  That is the creation of infrastructure, lots of it, over a very short time. HITLER’S NEW ROAD WON THE PEOPLE’S HEARTS IN GERMANY Hitler’s infrastructure legacy began with the first modern superhighways in the worl

Dear Bank of PNG and NASFUND Board, By TAITA VAGI TAU* I am a NASFUND member that is dead broke thanks to NASFUND. ANZ nearly repossessed my house so I had to borrow heavily from wantoks and street money sellers to pay off my arrears. I was without employment when my employer did a restructure in 2013. To put bread and butter on the table and pay for school fees, I used the little finish pay to buy and sell gold. This was not at all enough to help me service my mortgage with ANZ. After three months of unemployment in November 2013, I submitted a temporary unemployment withdrawal form with NASFUND. This was knocked back by NASFUND staffs the reason being they saw in my account I was depositing money from gold buying and selling. In the meantime I continued to rack up housing loan arrears with ANZ and all my request for NASFUND to help me withdraw my funds to pay off my housing loan dinau didn’t go anywhere with NASFUND. I did some investigations on NASFUND and just realised t

By JEFFREY RUNDUALI Peter O’Steal has done such damage to the national finances in the short time he has been in charge that he is now being forced to bring forward the 2015 Budget. It was originally to have been brought before Parliament in the first or second week of this month’s sitting, but the Government is in such disarray that legislation has not been prepared. Also, the Treasurer, who is ill with a "mystery disease", cannot get back to Port Moresby in time (another fat, greedy and greasy politician who has stolen enough money not to have to rely on the national medical health system, which is being systematically raped by Mr O’Steal and his cronies). Bringing the Budget down this month would have the additional benefit of protecting Mr O’Steal and his closest political cronies and beneficiaries from the vote of no confidence being planned for this month’s sitting. The forthcoming Constitutional reference on the grace periods is expe

The ridiculous Western Pacific University Fantasy Dream progresses, to take in its first students just before the 2017 election and managed by the Australian Royal Institute of Technology. Meanwhile, PNG’s existing public universities continue to deteriorate and already know that they’ll receive very small increases in funding for 2015, probably not even enough to keep above cost of living rates. It all sounds moronic but Peter O’Neill’s dream isn’t producing a peep of protest from any one of the MPs that make up his near-monopoly government nor the department of education itself. Who says we have a vibrant democracy where people aren’t afraid to speak out against idiocy? By a Angry Parent of a PNG Uni Student How many more times will Peter O’Neill slap our PNG public universities in the face? He has seen all the reports about their unprecedented decline. All he really has to do is remember his time at UPNG and compare it against the rundown campus he sees today. Our universities a