Riots and looting in Port Moresby after pay packet error - The World
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00:00 Well, it's been a very dramatic afternoon. What started as a relatively peaceful demonstration
00:06 this morning at Parliament House, largely led by police, defence and other public servants
00:13 over a pay issue, this afternoon escalated into very significant rioting. We saw videos
00:19 on WhatsApp circulating of looting taking place at many of the major shops. We've also
00:24 seen quite a few of those major shops and shopping centres that have already been set
00:29 alight. So this afternoon, the Prime Minister, James Murapay, has issued a statement that
00:33 Cabinet has approved for Defence to assist police in trying to restore order in the city
00:39 this evening. It is quite a tense security situation at the moment. Even from where I
00:44 am in downtown Port Moresby, I could hear gunshots just a little bit earlier towards
00:49 the downtown. So there is quite significant unrest. That's certainly the term that St
00:54 John's Ambulance are using. They say that they're responding to quite a significant
00:58 number of call-outs relating to shootings as well as those fires. So it's certainly
01:03 taken a turn for the worse this afternoon, and we're likely to see Defence and police
01:08 trying to restore order across large pockets of Port Moresby right in through to the evening.
01:13 And can you tell us more about what triggered the protests and unrest?
01:18 Yeah, it started off fairly innocuously this morning. We heard that police were demonstrating
01:24 over what they were describing as what they thought was a new tax that had been issued
01:28 on their pay. So it turns out for public servants in Papua New Guinea across the country, this
01:33 morning when they checked their pay slip, quite a significant amount had been docked
01:37 from their pay. Many were speculating it was a new tax. We did hear later in the day that
01:42 it turned out it was an error of the payroll system. There is a tax-free threshold here
01:48 in Papua New Guinea, but that hadn't been entered for the first pay cycle of the year.
01:53 Certainly the government said this was the case, and as a result, people received quite
01:57 a lot less in their pay packet in the fortnight than they were expecting. Some $120 Australian
02:02 dollars, which is a fairly significant amount for many, of course, on the lower end of that
02:06 income spectrum, many feeling those cost of living pressures and living basically week
02:11 to week. So there was demonstrations that we saw this morning from public servants,
02:18 but ultimately the political energy in the air has certainly played a role in contributing
02:23 to the violence that we're seeing this evening.
02:26 What has been the government's response to this incident? What action is it taking to
02:31 rectify the problems? Has it apologised?
02:36 We did hear from the Prime Minister this afternoon. He did apologise to public servants over the
02:42 payroll issue. He did say that it was Department of Finance staff who were at fault for not
02:47 updating that payroll, as he said, but certainly the Prime Minister did say that he did feel
02:52 for the families who were affected by this issue. But now that things have sort of escalated
02:58 far more, we have received an updated statement from the Prime Minister, again relating to
03:03 the use of defence and police this evening. Just having a look at that statement now.
03:08 He says that the NEC has made a decision for the defence call-out. He says to the public,
03:14 this is your country, the business houses pay taxes and these taxes pay for children's
03:18 school fees, let's all protect them. So there's certainly an urge for calm from PNG's Prime
03:23 Minister this evening, as we're seeing that very tense security situation play out this
03:27 evening.
03:28 Well, Tim Swanston in PNG, thanks for the update.
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