LLG president fusses over pay

By DOROTHY MARK
A LOCAL level government president in Madang stormed the Madang provincial government building on Thursday over his unpaid entitlements.
Gama LLG president Elijah Kas said he confronted the assembly clerk’s office and demanded to know why only selected LLG presidents were paid their entitlements, leaving him and others out.
Kas created a commotion to attract the attention of the media and concerned authorities.
He claimed that the item which the assembly services used to pay out entitlements for LLG presidents was controlled by the governor’s office and the assembly services being the right office to control and serve LLG presidents equally did not have the capacity to do so.
Kas claimed that K25,000 each were paid to selected LLG presidents from the governor’s office.
“I created a commotion because I wanted to know which criteria they used to do the pay out and left some of us out,” he said.
“I want to know which criteria I had failed to meet.”
A source from the provincial treasury confirmed K25,000 each was paid to some LLG presidents whose names were on a list sent from the governor’s office.
Attempts to get comments from Madang Governor Peter Yama were unsuccessful.
Madang acting administrator Joseph Bonomane replied to a mobile text massage saying he was not aware of the commotion.
Meanwhile, Kas said LLG presidents and ward councillors were leaders interacting with the people and should be given the attention they deserved.
“We do the dirty work on the ground to provide government services to our people from where and how we can,” he said.
“We are police officers, we are peace mediators, we are health workers and we are people of all trades when it comes to deal with the local people because we face them physically and not through pen and paper.”
He said the government needed to create a different system of rolling out entitlements for LLG presidents, ward councillors, land mediators, village court magistrates and peace officers so that those entitlements reached them equally, accordingly and on time.
“The current system where entitlements are controlled by the assembly services are controlled by senior politicians and we at the low level miss out big time,” Kas claimed.