Confusion delaying work: Brown

EAST New Britain is not pursuing autonomy because it does not have a community government act, its autonomy chairman Sinai Brown says.
Brown said there were confusion giving the province problems in progressing work on autonomy.
Addressing local level government (LLG) managers last week, Brown said in 1977, there was an organic law on provincial government which gave powers to provinces to establish LLGs and wards.
Brown said the amended law in 2005 took away those powers from provinces and gave them to Waigani.
“We are in a situation where we are supposed to know what should be happening in the province but, unfortunately, the Government deliberately shut away those ideas and are still saying that we are not making any laws,” he said.
“How can we make laws when before we make a law, we have to submit it to the National Executive Council in Waigani to approve.”
Brown said the autonomy committee was established to put the province back on track.
He said the Government should increase the powers of the LLG to make laws “but as I said we cannot pass those laws unless the National Executive Council approves that.”