Woman ordered to pay K600 to husband

By JAMES GUMUNO
A WOMAN who wants to divorce her husband has been ordered by a village court to pay him K600 in compensation and to pay the court a K100 fine.
The decision was upheld by the Mt Hagen District Court when she appealed against the village court’s ruling.
Mother-of-one Shirley Pora, from the Moge Komonka tribe in Hagen Central, in her appeal said she was still in school when she got married to husband Jimbon Backet.
She claimed in court that he did not allow her to go back to school or to move around.
She also told the court that when her father died, her husband did not pay her ticket to fly from Port Moresby to Mt Hagen to attend the funeral.
Backet told the court that he had married her in the village and brought her to Port Moresby in 2010. They have a daughter.
He said she went to the village court in 2017 to annul the marriage.
He finally agreed after she had been trying for some time.
Kei village court magistrates Zackly Mek, Dokta Wak and Andrew Buldung told District Court Magistrate Lydia Karre that Pora had wanted to end the marriage. So they granted her request on April 23 and told her to pay Backet K600 and the court K100.
Magistrate Karre told Pora that the village court magistrates had made a fair decision and had been lenient to her by not imposing more.
“I have not seen any error made by the village court. The decision is fair and I am dismissing this application,” she said.
She said it was up to Backet to sue her ex-wife over the bride price payment if he wanted to.