Water cuts may occur

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By DALE LUMA
WATER disruptions around the capital city can be expected from today as Water PNG’s Port Moresby operations (previously Eda Ranu) takes up some of its grievances with its management.
“There will be no water disruption, we are only removing the labour,” PNG Water Board Union general secretary Andrew Waine said.
“We cannot make the public suffer, the innocent consumers.”
The Eda Ranu and Water PNG merger, which began in 2018, resulted in Eda Ranu workers asking for an ex-gratia payment (as appreciation) and pay equalisation (matching pay with Water PNG workers) which they said should have been paid some time ago.
Waine said around 300 workers from the Port Moresby operations went on a peaceful strike yesterday at their Port Moresby 4-Mile depot, calling on State Enterprise Minister William Duma, Kumul Consolidated Holdings and the Water PNG management to respond to their demands.
He said if their issues were not addressed, there would be a rolling strike nationwide. “I apologise for any inconvenience caused to the consumers,” he said.
“We are not trying to harm consumers, but, we are fighting against the management and the State.
“We cannot make the general public suffer.
“We wrote to the minister, we wrote to Kumul Consolidated Holdings, the governing board of Water PNG and we also wrote to the Department of Labour, but there has been no response.”
Waine said the demand for ex-gratia was for goodwill payment to say thank you to the staff for their efforts. He said they were also demanding pay equalisation because there was a big difference between the salary of Port Moresby operations workers and Water PNG staff.
“For example, water operators up at Mt Eriama are getting K20,000 to K28,000 per annum and Water PNG workers are getting K60,000 to K72,000 per annum, which is totally unfair,” he said.
“We have almost 700 employees of Water PNG but in the Port Moresby operations alone, there are 378 workers now on strike.”
Port Moresby has also been experiencing some water disruptions in parts of the city such as Waigani, Gerehu and Rainbow.