Covid-19 control shifted

National

By HELEN TARAWA
THE Government plans to shift the powers of National Pandemic Response Controller David Manning to the Health secretary, says Health and HIVAIDS Minister Sir Puka Temu.
Sir Puka said the transfer arrangement was the subject of an amendment to the National Pandemic Act 2020.
“When Parliament agrees, and based on the amendment to the bill, the powers of the (National Pandemic Response) Controller would be transferred to the Health secretary,” he said.
“The powers of the Controller David Manning who is also the Commissioner of Police would be moved to the Health secretary or his deputy,” he said.
Manning will return to his role as Police Commissioner. Sir Puka said PNG would have to learn to live with the Covid-19.
“We need not fear. Through the Prime Minister, we have allowed our economy to open up, markets to open, PMVs to operate.
“But we must make sure to wear masks, wash hands and practise social distancing.
“The children are now getting used to washing hands and that’s a good practice. Those issues must still be observed.
“Social distancing, wearing masks wherever possible especially in confined areas such as the Parliament House and washing of hands are important.
“While we maintain that the economic impact if we have lockdown would be far worse than the health impact because our rates are low.”

4 comments

  • When others try to apply for such a sum to run a business it takes months and months or even years for your applications to be looked at. End of all that tussle and hustle it’s been declined or rejected.
    K10m is a lot of money and mind you it’s the tax payers money. How could a company be registered just a day before and the next day receive K10m?

    Authorities must look at this as mangi blo ples is already in prison, could this be another of these business scams

  • The government is getting the boots.
    Next the doctors and scientists of Niugini BioMed will start up their research in Bomana.
    Ol i mas pispis pinis.

  • Obviously K10million is a lot of money and I don’t know whether the government did some cost analysis on this undertaking. On the other hand research does involve a lot of money from conception to planning and design to building specialized labs to recruiting of specialized scientists to literature reviews to collaborations with other renown labs in and around the world to sourcing of materials, to actual research including consumables and logistics to administrations to training to trialing which could take the next 5-10 years and the list just continues and I think K10million is not enough. I also believe by the time we put our vaccine to trial the world would already be immunized. Some of the worlds superpowers are in phase three trial of their vaccines and I don’t know where would that place PNG in let alone the scientific minds of PNG decide. Adding on we do have some of the top scientific brains in the world and a break through would be possible. I encourage research however if the government can properly prioritize through the office of higher education, research science and technology it would be appropriate. We have a forum to discuss this which we usually have and this could be one of our discussion going forward. I see that hosting the APEC and signing off K10million for an agenda which is not within our development KPIs are two decisions our government took that does not reflect our standing in the world of nations.
    I would prefer we start small something within our means and go on from there.

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