Army fights to stay within budget

By TREVOR WAHUNE
The K20 million cut in the Papua New Guinea Defence Force budget for 2018 will affect catering and new capabilities development programmes, says PNGDF commander Brigadier-General Gilbert Toropo.
Toropo said at a media briefing after a PNGDF end-of-year church service in Port Moresby yesterday that in light of the budget cut, the PNGDF has realigned its priorities towards security for Apec 2018, border security and training.
“We are looking at rationalising our costs to make sure that nothing is overloaded.
“We understand that the whole country is going through a financial crisis, so what we’ve done is realign our priorities to make sure that our core activities are continued and maintained.”
Toropo said the PNGDF also wanted to continue building the force to 10,000 men by 2030 as directed by the Government, so recruiting and training would also be one of its priorities apart from the usual activities.
He said fuel, rations, power and water bills were also going to be a challenge for the defence force next year.
Toropo said everyone in the PNGDF headquarters and other units understood the tough situation they were in so they were told that all activities were to be done to support their priorities.
“In terms of Apec preparations, PNGDF has prepared in the last three years and we are satisfied with the preparations.
“We have also had support of the Australian Defence Force and New Zealand Defence Force to train and prepare our special forces through our bilateral training activities that we conduct and they have assisted us well.
“We have people posted into the joint task force security office and they are there fulltime, so from the point of view of the PNGDF, we are ready.
“We have put our request to our bilateral partners, especially Australia, to fill in areas that we cannot be able to meet by ourselves, like aerial surveillance as well as maritime security where the PNGDF does not have the capability to maintain security alone.”