Unions plan work stoppage in PNG

Port Moresby (Papua New Guinea Post-Courier/PINA Nius Online) – The Government has been asked to take full responsibility of any loss incurred today when Papua New Guinea’s workforce voluntarily stops work.

The PNG Trade Union Congress and the Anti-privatization Alliance hope to bring the country to its knees by asking workers to walk of their jobs to attend these meetings that would be held in all provinces.

TUC general secretary John Paska said that Elcom, workers at the waterfront, communication services, Air Niugini, the Correctional Institutional Services, police and the military had all pledged their support.

“However we are mindful of the effects the stopwork will have and therefore will not disrupt services at hospitals and people will still have water,” he said.

Mr. Paska said although this was not an option that they wanted to take, they did not have any alternatives after the Government refused on numerous occasions to meet with them.

Mr. Paska said that the stopwork was organized to send signals to the Government about the “silent majority’s” opposition to privatization and for the Government to offer the National Provident Fund money so that it did not go ahead with the proposed write-down of contributors funds.

He said that despite the numerous criticisms labeled at the Government over the issue of privatization, it still failed to see the peoples opposition to it and that was very frustrating.

“The feeling is unanimous” and all major organizations will come to a standstill, said Mr. Paska.

He said that privatization was a World Bank policy and comments about it being beneficial to the country were temporary and would be short-lived.

In regards the proposed NPF write-down, Mr. Paska said that it was immoral and they could not do that to peoples lifetime savings.

He said if there was anyone who should be blamed for problems at NPF it was the Government in its capacity as a legislator.

Mr. Paska said that the stopwork should was not be misinterpreted as a strike.

“It is not an industrial action. It is a social action that aims at securing social justice” he said.

The Prime Ministers office told the Post-Courier that the Government encouraged dialogue and therefore was not ignorant of the workers demands.