Back to normal, pay issue fixed

By ANTOINETTE POIVI
The state of emergency imposed after the civil unrest has ended but the callout will continue.
Acting police commissioner Donald Yamasombi said with the state of emergency ending as of 11.59pm last night, all SoE measures had been lifted and everything was to go back to normal.
He said the purpose of the SoE was to restore normalcy to city residents, business houses and students who would be returning to school for the new academic year.
“The security forces will still be patrolling the city to maintain peace,” he said. “We have achieved the objective of that SoE. Business houses and shops have opened and everything is back to normal.”
He also mentioned that further recommendations will be made to try to prevent such events from happening again.
“The SoE call centre number 1800500 will still be in operations,” he said.
Yamasombi told The National that Lae Metropolitan chief Superintendent Chris Kunyanban will be acting Assistant Commissioner for Northern Command.
Members of the security forces will continue their patrols in Port Moresby to ensure peace and order.
Defence Force acting Chief of Defence Commodore Philip Polewara said they would support police on the patrols and thanked those who had been supporting the security forces maintain peace in Port Moresby and other parts of the country.
“We will allow the children to go back to school and allow for the economy to pick up again,” he said.
Meanwhile, public servants who received their fortnightly pay yesterday confirmed that the discrepancy in their pay a fortnight ago which triggered a civil unrest in Port Moresby has been fixed.
Soldier Alrich Amonyel in Lae said: “Yes the Government did reimburse the money they took from the last pay.
“Mine was a K130 pay cut last fortnight. Today, they reimbursed it.”
Teacher Immaculate Tayul in Port Moresby said: “Yes, the tax issue has been resolved in my pay.”
Public servants from various departments randomly interviewed yesterday said their fortnightly pay was back to normal.
Chief Secretary to Government Ivan Pomaleu had assured public servants that the salary deductions made in their last pay would be corrected in this week’s pay.
“Officers affected by the now permanent income tax threshold of K20,000 should expect to see a correction of the deduction from Pay One,” he said.
He said in Pay Three two weeks from now, “the normal pay will run, and it should reflect the correct tax levels”.
“It should, therefore, not cause any anxiety when the take-home pay reverts back to the correct level in Pay Three,” he said on Tuesday.
“Other case by case HR adjustments that apply to individual pays should appear in the normal way.”