Port causeway facing likely challenge

By HELEN TARAWA
PNG Ports says a causeway built to connect the mainland to the Motukea Port falls within the periphery of the land it had bought.
Managing director Stanley Alphonse was responding to a claim by a landowner group that the causeway might have infringed on customary land which is currently the subject of a dispute between two clans.
Alphonse told The National that PNG Ports had spent K350 million for the port facility, including the land it was built on. PNG Ports has made a submission to the Lands Minister to approve that the land be reserved for port development.
“We know that we bought an entire piece of infrastructure for the country of which the causeway is within,” he said.
He said they were doing it for the good of the country.
“I’m talking about land eight metres from the high-water mark all the way down to the ocean and underneath and everything else that runs in between,” Alphonse said.
Gaudi Rei said on behalf of the Tanomotu clan in Baruni that there was customary land ownership dispute with the Kaevega clan, also from Baruni, over a piece of customary land known as Sasiva since 2016. He said PNG Ports might have trespassed on that land by building the K300 million causeway.