The best way for Papua New Guinea to increase economic growth and boost the size of the economy is for the government to implement a comprehensive plan to tackle corruption.
This is the message from community advocacy group ACT NOW! which has published an analysis of the economic costs of corruption and the measures needed to defeat it.
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Community advocacy group ACT NOW! is again calling on the government to publicly release the draft ICAC law that it has promised will shortly be debated by Parliament.
ACT NOW! says there have been so many delays over the establishment of an Independent Commission Against Corruption that the government cannot be trusted not to have watered down the Commission’s powers and that it may end up as just another toothless tiger.
The Government is plotting to grab more customary land and hand it to multi-national companies and the commercial banks, says community advocacy group ACT NOW!
“The government has been forced to stop issuing illegal SABL leases but now wants to use the National Land Summit as a cover to find new ways to ‘facilitate access to customary land’ for big business and the banks”, says campaign manger, Eddie Tanago.
It is one of the world’s biggest illegal land grabs, yet more than 5-years after the government promised to cancel the SABL leases and return the land to its customary owners, the people of Papua New Guinea are still waiting to hear which, if any, leases have been cancelled.
International and national civil society groups have welcomed the announcement that international experts will support government authorities crack down on tax evasion by multinational companies in the forestry and fisheries sectors. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is sending auditors to Papua New Guinea early next year to work with officials from the Finance Department and Internal Revenue Commission, under its Tax Inspectors Without
The appalling human rights abuses being suffered by the victims of the huge SABL land-grab in Papua New Guinea are the focus of a new report published today.
The SABL Land Grab: Papua New Guinea’s Ongoing Human Rights Scandal highlights the devastating impacts on people living in rural communities and gives a voice to those who have suffered the illegal loss of their land to logging and oil-palm plantations.
Community advocacy group ACT NOW! is calling on Lands Minister Justin Tkatchenko to name the Special Agriculture Business Leases he claims have been cancelled.
“For the last five years we have heard numerous false claims and unfulfilled promises from the government about the cancellation of the leases”, says Campaign Coordinator Eddie Tanago.
“While we welcome the information released by the Minister, the pubic simply cannot trust his numbers and he must reveal the names of the leases and other details".
The government’s announcement of a so-called ’interim ICAC’ is an insult to the nation and an abuse of the ICAC name says community advocacy group ACT NOW!
ACT NOW! says an ICAC must be independent from government and free from any political interference, but, what the Prime Minister has announced, fundamentally fails both these tests.
Peter O’Neill and his government have been pledging to establish an ICAC since 2012 yet all that has been announced is a politically driven body set up to investigate political opponents.
Foreign owned logging companies could be defrauding the country of hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenues says community advocacy group ACT NOW! It is calling for a moratorium on any further logging licences until there is a full and transparent investigation and the cancellation of all illegal SABL leases.
The government has tried to bury and forget the SABL land grab scandal in which more than 5 million hectares of land has been stolen from rural communities.
It is using a well tested formula that we see employed almost every time a new corruption scandal is exposed:
First a long-drawn out official inquiry that is delayed by funding and other logistical problems.
Then a further delay before the inquiry findings are tabled in Parliament.