Mendi mayhem sparks fear in health officials, public servants

THE chaos in Mendi town is creating fear among public servants and their families and is restricting their freedom of movement to access social services such as shopping, the provincial health authority says.
Southern Highlands health authority director curative health services Dr Martin Sa’avu said there were no immediate threats to life but it was creating fear among their families.
That was restricting their freedom of movement to access services such as shopping and banking.
Sa’avu said their children’s education had been disrupted continuously. The continuous disruption started since last year’s elections.
He is also the caretaker chief executive of Southern Highlands health authority.
He said a crisis meeting with senior management staff, medical officers and general staff was held on Monday.
“A security update from the PNG Defence Force command representative Lt-Col Todick on their purpose of arrival was mainly to protect state properties and major infrastructure within the town area, provide security to the public servants and allow normalcy to return to the town,” he said.
“The representative assured that the Defence Force will be around the hospital on daily basis and conduct roadblocks on the outskirts of the town area to check on weapons being carried into town.”
Sa’avu said the planned way forward for the health services now was to:

• Continue to scale down operations at the hospital. Changes to the situation will be updated and decisions reviewed; Normal operations should return by Monday.
• put on hold all district runs (especially Nipa-Kutubu) until security in districts was cleared and vehicles grounded for emergency patient transfers;
• arrange with villages to stop security from Monday as security personnel had arrived and were providing security;
• allow doctors to leave the institution if they wished to; and,
• Arrange for doctors’ children to be taken out to travel as arranged by management.