From The Australian Feb 17 2017:
Electricity sup*plies to Papua New Guinea’s Parliament House, the national police headquarters, and Government House — the office and home of Acting Governor-Genera*l Theodore Zurenuoc — have been disconnected for non-payment of bills.
PNG Power Ltd — the country’s monopoly, state-owned company responsible for the generation, transmission, dis*tribution and retail of electricity — said that these institutions owed about $450,000.
Their bills have not been paid since last November.
The institutions have been closed since they were disconnected on Tuesday, leaving them without lighting, airconditioning and telecommunications.
The parliament building has its own standby generator — as do many private businesses in PNG, since PNG Power’s supply is often disrupted by blackouts.
But the acting clerk of the parliament*, Kala Aufa, told The Post-Courier newspaper that the building lacked a store of fuel for its generator, and so he had to make such an order before this alternative source of power could be switched on.
Mr Aufa conceded that the parliament owed PPL $245,000, but said the payment of utilities had become centralised by the Finance Department, which took over that responsibility for all state agencies at the start of the year.
“We just get the bills and give it to them,” he said.
He expressed concern that the parliament might also find its telecommunications and water services discontinued, if those bills were not settled.
Opposition Leader Don Polye blamed the government’s “incapacity to handle simple funding and administrative matters*”. He said the country was suffering a cashflow problem as a result of a mismanagement of funds that was affecting the entire public system.
He warned that salaries would also be affected.
Australian economist Paul Flanagan recently warned in a blog post that “PNG’s inter*national economic situation is much more frail than the picture presented by the Peter O’Neill government’’.
“The International Monetary Fund calls the foreign reserves position ‘weak’. It has less than one third the recommended level in its international bank account*,” he wrote.