Need for health insurance plan

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By KARO JESSE
THE Government should initiate a medical insurance scheme to help manage the health of judges and to address some of the benefits lacking in private insurers, PNG Law Society president Allan Mana says.
“The recent raising of retirement age to 72 for judges calls for serious health management,” he said in his address at the ceremonial sitting for the late Justice Regina Sagu in the Waigani National Court in Port Moresby yesterday.
“While the judicial strength is one thing, I also believe that we, as a community, as the Government, could be taking care of our judges a bit better in terms of managing health issues.
“The workload and pressures of the job can have an impact on health.
“While managing one’s health is a personal responsibility, given the special circumstance of judges, the government should initiate a medical insurance scheme for judges.”
Mana remembered Justice Sagu as an instrumental woman when she was called to be a judge last March 19 to boost the number of judges in Mt Hagen. Prior to her appointment to the bench, she served as a principal magistrate and later as the acting director for the PNG Centre of Judicial Excellence.
She was responsible for drafting the initial curriculum for the centre, before returning to magisterial services.
Apart from her judicial role, she was also a qualified judicial trainer in PNG and the Pacific, after having being trained in Australia, New Zealand and Fiji.
She was a member of the Commonwealth judicial education institution headquartered in Canada.
Justice Sagu was also remembered for her notable contributions to religion and charitable and benevolent pursuits outside her professional life.

2 comments

  • Judges can’t function without Court staff too, police to escort remandees or CIS to run prisons and that then includes catering staff in the jails etc etc !

    PNG is not a legal community only. It is is an integrated society with no one person more important than any other. We are dependent on each other. Even the lowly farmers help feed to Judge too. Or he depends on imported foods and so the sailors and wharfies who get it ashore for truckers to carry to the supermarkets for retail staff to display and sell. While his high covenant home is maintained by not only his wife but often domestic help too.
    Likewise if he gets ill he needs all sorts of medical help from doctors down to hospital cleaners.
    It is a fallacy of the elite that the top man or woman is more important to the nation than the lowliest. It is how they says they should be paid more than other less visible workers and how they can say we are worth special health care or to be paid K200000 or often far more in wages

  • I am happy to put up my hands up to be the private physician of the Judiciary System of the Independent state of Papua New Guinea to diagnose, manage, escalate and provide preventative and curative services to all judiciary employees.

    Dr.Leslie Bahn Kawa DDM, MSc, MRCP UK, MRCP Edin, FRCP
    Consultant Physician &Cardiologist
    East Sussex NHS Trust
    England

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