Funds to be given after directors’ election

THE four villages at the PNG LNG plant site outside Port Moresby will elect their directors this month before benefit payments are made to them, according to the Mineral Resources Development Company.
MRDC managing director Augustine Mano said landowners from Boera, Porebada, Papa and Lealea villages would receive the payments in their accounts after the directors had been elected.
The accounts for the 98 clans at the four villages were opened last December with the Bank of South Pacific.
“Opening of bank accounts has already been done,” Mano told The National yesterday.
“This Saturday (tomorrow), we will do an awareness. The election will be done the following week for the directors. Once the election is done, they (directors) will select their board and we will start paying the money (to the landowners).”
Petroleum and Energy Minister Nixon Duban had given the same assurance last month after a group of landowners protested outside the plant site.
“Our people are key stakeholders and we are obliged to look into all representation issues,” he said.
Duban told Parliament last month: “We (Government) respect different segments of LNG owners from the upstream to plant site and pipeline segment.
“It is the Government’s intention to see that all landowners are paid.
“It is important that we treat all landowners sensitively.”