Immigration denies claims of food shortages

PAPUA NEW GUINEA – Cost cutting is being blamed for deteriorating conditions at the Manus Island processing centre for asylum seekers in Papua New Guinea.

Food shortages and power cuts are adding to the frustration of about 900 men sent to the centre by Australia, where detention has been ruled illegal, Radio New Zealand is reporting.

After the Papua New Guinea Supreme Court ruled in April that detaining people at the centre was unconstitutional, PNG’s government signalled it would close.

The spokesperson for Australia’s Refugee Action Coalition, Ian Rintoul, thinks companies contracted to provide services at the centre are reducing their costs, now that its closure is imminent.

“So they’re very concerned about spending money, how much more resources they should be putting into the place. That’s created a bigger problem with meals, they’ve now got hundreds of people lining up, sometimes waiting for an hour in the queue to get food which sometimes runs out before they can even be served.”

One of those on Manus, the Kurdish Iranian journalist and asylum seeker, Behrouz Boochani, says food at the centre no longer smells safe to eat.

“Only they give us a kind of chicken and that has very bad smell and we must eat that. Only chicken, every day for lunch and dinner. For example I didn’t have dinner last night because the food was finished.”

Rintoul says rolling power cuts at the centre could also indicate cost cutting.

“People do feel that they are deliberate. I mean it’s always difficult to ascertain whether they are or they aren’t, but the fact that power is cut to some compounds and not to others, the whole detention centre doesn’t have a blackout at once, would indicate some control being exercised over which compounds are getting power at which times. But in any case, it’s certainly clear that the number of power cuts is increasing.”

Boochani says power is often cut to the centre’s air conditioning at night, making sleep next to impossible in the island’s tropical climate. He feels the power cuts are deliberate.

“They said the generator is the problem but I don’t believe in them and we don’t trust in them because during the last three years when they want to punish us they use the power against us. Because when they cut the power automatically the water is cut.”

Rintoul says the increasing role of PNG police inside the centre may have also provided an opportunity for service providers to make savings.

An Iranian christian detainee, Siyavash Shakibnia says the PNG police officers are less intimidating than the Australian guards, although they seem to be taking orders from the Australians.

“Before they used to run the centre by the Australian guard and right now all responsibility goes to the police. Just police get the orders from the Australian government. They are not independent.”

The company Broadspectrum is contracted to provide services like meals and maintenance at Manus until February, but it declined to comment.

The Australian Immigration Department refutes claims of deteriorating conditions at the centre.

It says there are currently no water or electricity restrictions, nor a shortage of food.

The PNG Immigration Authority says there has never been a shortage of food or drinking water at the centre

It says residents receive nutritious and culturally appropriate meals three times a day, while occasional power cuts have been fixed within several hours.

At the end of the month the PNG Supreme Court will consider awarding compensation to the detainees on Manus and returning them to Australian custody. - Dateline Pacific