Australia assures locals of businesses

 The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade will ensure that local businesses and individuals on Manus are provided with opportunities from the Regional Processing Centre.

It comes after concerns were raised by the Manus Chamber of Commerce and Industry president Peter Poiou that local businesses were missing out on opportunities because companies and businesses from outside the province were contracted to provide services there.

In an email to The National, the department said its service providers to the Manus centre were required, as stipulated in their contracts, to engage local businesses wherever possible to provide services for the centre.

It said construction companies engaged provincial and non-provincial businesses in support of construction activities. “On average, the construction projects employed 100 Manusians daily for the duration of the projects,” the department said.

“As at 31 December, 2015 there were seven different Manus businesses providing construction services at the Manus centre.”

The Australian department noted that economic and development benefits to PNG of the regional settlement arrangement at end of last year included, on average, weekly purchases by the centre of more than K600,000 worth of goods and services from 21 PNG businesses.

Many of these were businesses in Manus which delivered food and produce, security, transport and cleaning services. 

There are 1263 PNG citizens employed to provide services at the centre at Lombrum – 809 of whom are from Manus.