Four allowed to return home from Jayapura

By CLIFFORD FAIPARIK
FOUR Papua New Guinean men were allowed to return to their villages in West Sepik after coming from Indonesia without following Covid-19 protocols, provincial administrator Conrad Tilau says.
Tilau said this happened because of a lack of communication between the West Sepik Covid-19 team and the National Covid-19 centre in Port Moresby.
He said there was no coordination between the National Pandemic Controller’s office, Immigration, Foreign Affairs and the provincial administration when PNG Consul-General Geoffrey Wiri, in Jayapura, brought the four men to the Wutung border administration post and repatriated them to the PNG side.
Tilau said his administration considered the men as illegal border crossers as they were cleared by PNG officials and, therefore, posed a risk of spreading the Covid-19.
He said the men should have been quarantined for 14 days at the isolation centre in Vanimo as required by the Covid-19 protocols and later released to their villages.
Tilau could not confirm if the four men were quarantined in Jayapura under Indonesian Covid-19 protocols before being repatriated.