No power in House

ELECTRICITY supply to Parliament House has been disconnected due to the non-payment of bills amounting to around K600,000, an official says.
Acting Clerk Kala Aufa told The National that PNG Power disconnected the supply because the bills for December and January had not been paid.
Parliament staff were yesterday trying to fix the generators to supply power to the offices in Parliament.
Aufa said Parliament’s electricity bill averaged K270,000 to K300,000 a month.
“The current owing is for January (2017) and December (2016). These have to be taken care of by Finance,” Aufa said.
“Our normal monthly bill is about K300,000.
“So for these two months, it’s about K600,000.”
Aufa, pictured, said Parliament used to pay its own electricity, water and telephone bills until this year when the Finance Department took over.
Finance Secretary Dr Ken Ngangan did not respond to phone calls and text messages.
Aufa said: “These come under utilities and are taken care of by Finance.
“We used to take care of our own bills before.
“But this year, they have a new system in which all utilities will be taken care of by Finance.
“So we just get the bills and give it to them.”
Aufa said he understood that there was a meeting on Tuesday between Finance, Treasury and PPL to discuss the outstanding bill.
He said the only Parliament staff at work yesterday were officers at Human Resources, Accounts and security.
Aufa said the problem should be resolved this week.
“Everything will be alright by this week,” he said.
“We’ve just got the genset working again.
“This morning (yesterday), our genset wasn’t working, so we had to work on it all morning.”
Recently, offices at Central Government Building in Waigani had their power supply cut off because of the non-payment of bills amounting to more than K1.2 million.
Yesterday, Opposition Leader Don Polye  said it was an example of the kind of poor service the Government was providing to the country.
“The O’Neill Government’s incapacity to handle simple funding and administrative matters begins at the top level,” Polye said.
“It cascades down to all agencies and Government service providers.”