Landowners

He said individuals are claiming to be genuine landowners when they are not.

Speaking this morning as a local MP from Tari in Hela Province, Finance Minister Marape called on all landowners to go home and identify their land.

He said many ‘paper landowners’ are roaming the streets of Port Moresby without any purpose in life.

“Can we have all those so-called landowner leaders living in Port Moresby go home and help with the LOBID exercise?

“Go sanap lo baret kaukau blo yu, or diwai blo yu or maunten blo yu na tokim mipla olsem yu tru tru papa graun”.

Per the advice of the Department of Petroleum and Energy, MRDC is now in the process of rolling out its program starting in segment 7 (Gulf/SHP Border) from Friday, November 2^nd .

Segment 7 has the longest length of Pipeline running through it, covering 37 clans who together hold a 44 per cent interest.

This process will see that the landowners of the pipeline start to receive their royalty and equity payment from the PNGLNG Project.

Both parties signed the power purchasing agreement in 2015 followed by the recent issuing of the generation licence.

Under this agreement, the Government agreed to bring 30 megawatts of biomass energy to the Ramu grid however, that is yet to eventuate.

Landowners claim the government’s proposal for a coal-fired power generation is the reason for the delay.

The landowners are in Port Moresby at the moment to pursue their concerns with the Minister for Energy, Sam Basil, and Minister for Treasury, Charles Abel.

The State and Ramu 2 Hydro Developer, Shenzen Company Limited, are finalizing discussions with the launching expected in November.

Under the agreement the State along with the Provinces of Eastern Highlands and Morobe, and Landowners will own 30% while Shenzen Energy has a 70% stake.

Minister for State Owned Enterprises, William Duma, says discussions with landowners and the Province have already commenced and they are awaiting the commercial agreement to be finalized.

The villagers claimed that the work site, which is on a piece of disputed land, was still in court and developers should not be there carrying out any activities until the land issue is cleared.

Joseph Baeau, Chairman of the Papa Delegation Committee dealing with controversial land issues, and his committee led a group of people to the work site to demand a stop work from contractor Curtain Brothers.

The landowners are claiming that breaches in the MOA have caused negative impacts on the social, environmental and economic lives of the Porgera landowners. 

Chairman of the Resource Owners Federation of PNG, Jonathan Paraia, said the 1988 proposals sought State approval and issuance of a Special Mining Lease (SML) for the mine to construct mining infrastructure that was capable of processing eight thousand tons of crushed ore through its mill over a mine life of twenty years.

Mining Minister, Johnston Tuke, and acting Managing Director of the Mineral Resources Authority (MRA), Nathan Mosusu, said this during royalty payment for the project on Friday, 6^th July.

The royalties totaling K25, 537, 210.13 were paid on behalf of the National Government by Tuke, the landowners and the Madang Provincial Government.

Of the total amount, K17,620,674.99 was paid to landowners and K7,916,535.14 to the Madang Provincial Government.

It was during the payment that Minister Tuke called on them to use their money wisely.

In a joint conference this afternoon, Chairman of Angore Special Authority, Hari John Akipe, alongside other leaders of the Angore Well head and Hakupara clan urged the developer and the government to ignore these demands.

The landowners said the issues raised in their petition on May 22, 2018 were not genuine and were not from genuine landowners and as such was not supported by the principal Wellhead clans who are custodians and security of the three Wellheads at Angore PDL8.

In a media conference today in Port Moresby the landowners have given seven days to the Government and the PNG LNG project developer to respond to their petition.

They have threatened that if decisions from the Government are not favorable, they will be shutting down the project.

They raised this issue after the Government released K35 million to the Hides landowners and not them.

Angore landowners spokes person, Eric Mandoro said the Government had been very slow in processing the clan vetting which resulted in them not getting any royalty benefits.

The four major landowner chairmen met with the Minister for Mining, Johnson Tuke, recently to air their grievances.

In a meeting recently held in Port Moresby, the landowners from the Kurumbukari, Basamuk, Basamuk Coastal Pipeline and Maijuri inland pipeline urged Minister Tuke to give them feedback on their overdue royalty payments since the beginning of the project in 2013.

Toby Bare, chairman of Kurumbukari Landowners Association, said the landowners have been waiting patiently for the past years for the Government to hear their plight but nothing has been forthcoming.