PNG to close Taipei trade office, says minister

By LULU MAGINDE
FOREIGN Affairs Minister Justin Tkatchenko announced yesterday that the National Executive Council (NEC) has approved the closure of Papua New Guinea’s Taipei trade office in Taiwan.
He explained that after a cost-benefit analysis of that office, it has been decided to shut it down and replaced by a office.
This would be the first of more Foreign Service missions to be closed.
“From the Department of Foreign Affairs, we’ve come to the conclusion that the office was no longer needed, but we’ll be setting up a new office, lower than what it was to ensure that we can have a better understanding between Taipei and PNG,” he said.
Tkatchenko described an assault involving a PNG diplomatic staff as an embarrassment and that they were all called back immediately and banned from serving in the Foreign Service.
The diplomat made headlines for attacking his wife and an employee of a Taipei restaurant in a drunken rage in September last year.
Following the incident, the diplomat’s wife was in coma while the restaurant employee received six stitches.
The diplomat worked as a secretary at PNG office in Taiwan.
The new office will be called the PNG Taipei Economic office and will be headed by a business liaison official, in conjunction with the Chinese and Taiwanese governments.
Tkatchenko revealed that there were always plans to close down the Taiwan office, while also looking at the performance of all PNG missions around the world to determine which ones needed to be kept open.
He added that laws of the host country needed to be respected and criminal and inappropriate behaviour would not be tolerated.