Court upholds treasurer’s decision

By ELLEN TIAMU
The National Court has upheld a decision by the Morobe acting provincial treasurer to refuse paying K200,000 to Black Cat Ltd.
The company and the Morobe provincial executive committee took acting provincial treasurer Andrew Namuesh to court for not paying the K200,000 under the special support grant.
The decision to pay the company had been made by the provincial executive committee on June 19 last year.
Black Cat and the committee were represented by Manaseh and Co Lawyers while Namuesh was represented by the solicitor-general.
Black Cat Ltd sought to declare that Namuesh had no legal authority to refuse the payment after the committee had approved it.
The committee decision was revoked and superseded by a subsequent decision in Sept 20 last year which authorised payments to other groups under the district services improvement programme.
Lawyer John Kerenga for Namuesh said the latter’s action in refusing to pay was legitimate and in the proper exercise of his powers, functions and responsibilities as stipulated under section 70(2) of the Public Finance Management Act and sec 112(5) of the Organic Law on Provincial and Local Governments Act.
Kerenga said the memorandum of agreement in respect of the Hidden Valley Gold project showed that the company was not a party to it nor was it entitled to receive any funds from the provincial government.
Justice Don Sawong ruled that on the basis of the revocation, the claim by Black Cat was no longer in existence and described it as a “complete sham”.
“For those reasons, I am of the opinion that the actions of the provincial treasurer in refusing to pay was proper and within his powers and responsibilities,” he said