Landowner company

THE government needs to seriously take heed of two press releases published in The National (June 18, page 16), obviously from the upstream project areas landowner company representatives, in Gulf, Southern Highlands and Hela.
This is in reference to the ‘believed to be still’ outstanding Umbrella Benefits Sharing Agreements (UBSA) findings and commitments that were agreed upon by the stakeholders during the PNG LNG Project UBSA meeting held in Rabaul in 2009.
These agreements were in the form of memorandum of agreements and were just that, MoAs, and to which some would agree have no legal basis or standing.
The government under these MoAs made undertakings to support landowner project wish- lists either by using its “best endeavours” or making “good efforts” to bring the proposed projects before the Expenditure Implementation Committee and or relevant statutory authorities for vetting and approval.
These MoAs mainly covered for infrastructure development grants, business development grants and the high impact infrastructure projects and tied-in both the respective local level governments (LLGs) and the provincial governments impacted by the LNG project.
The intentions here were for the national government to provide budgetary submissions pertaining to these MoAs and to have them allocated to the impacted landowner companies in partnership with the Works Department and the LLGs and provincial governments along or within the project areas to undertake their wish-list projects.
This is why we are now seeing or evidencing such press releases now emanating from those impacted landowner companies from the upstream project areas, raising concerns as to what has become of these MoA commitment, funding for which are claimed to be held in various State trust accounts?
By the way, the press releases by these landowner company representatives are much more concerned with the infrastructure development grants, and the high impact infrastructure projects, as most of the business development grants were already disbursed during the construction phases of the project.
So indeed the government had failed in its “best endeavours” and its “good efforts” to honour the MoA commitments to the landowner companies and the LLG and provincial government in terms of its budgetary submissions which it had failed to implement for over 10 years now!
But in fairness to the government, an independent audit needs to be undertaken over the business development grants as to how these grants in millions of kina were disbursed to conned or spurious businesses and individuals alike.
But you can only guess right, like me, what these issues might end up with if the government does not favourably respond to the two press releases issued by the landowner company representatives!

Lorenitz Gaius
Ketskets village