Payments to MPs for votes denied

PAPUA NEW GUINEA – The office of Papua New Guinea’s prime minister has denied that MPs who committed to Peter O’Neill in the vote of no-confidence last week received massive cash payouts.

This came after media reports citing sources revealing the government ordered a payment of US$900,000 to each government MP ahead of the vote in the guise of district service improvement programme, or DSIP, funds.

However a spokesman for PNG’s prime minister said he understands that US$34 million was drawn, and that the money is for disbursement to each district and province in PNG.

That breaks down to a little over US$300,000 for each MP’s electorate or district. The spokesman said this disbursement was part of a regular process, where the money is specifically targeted and accounted for by people at local level.

The government said the opposition had been making “misleading claims” about the use of district funds.

The opposition had also come in for criticism by the Mineral Resources Development Company which has slammed allegations that state funds were used to facilitate the government’s camp in Alotau last week for coalition discussions ahead of the vote.

The MRDC is a state-run body tasked with managing the landowner equity interests in PNG’s mining and petroleum projects.

The board of MRDC told PNG Loop it”rejects outright the allegations made against the office of the managing director which are baseless and devoid of any truth”.

The Hides Gas Development Company Limited took out a full page advertisement in the Post-Courier newspaper on Friday last week denying the allegations. - RNZI