Workers’ act needs review

 PAPUA New Guinea’s Workers’ Compensation Act is outdated and needs to be reviewed,  a government official says.

Acting Secretary for the Department of Labour and Industrial Relations Maria Lovaga said that yesterday during the opening of the new  Office of Workers’ Compensation in Lae, Morobe.

Lovaga was acting on behalf of Secretary George Vaso, who is attending an international workers’ meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, with Labour and Industrial Relations Minister Benjamin Poponawa.

“Our workers’ compensation laws were inherited from colonial times and there is a need to have them updated,” Lovaga said.

“PNG does not have a good social security system that supports the people, especially the workers.” 

Lovaga said, for example, the Workers’ Compensation Act and the Occupational Health and Safety Act needed to be reviewed so that they could be made into a single and comprehensive act to avoid overlapping as is currently the case.

“There are a lot of issues with our labour laws that needs to be reviewed,” she said.

Lovaga said the Labour and Industrial Relations Department was putting a team together to review these acts and other labour laws to improve some of its statues to meet modern-day needs.

She said this was the department’s long-term plan and the review was among other key changes the office was looking to achieve.