The Chairman of the SPC, Hon Gary Juffa reflects on last week’s 2nd part hearing (Wednesday 06th August) with his fellow committee members, Hon. GC Sir Peter Ipatas, Hon. William Powi and Hon Marsh Narawec, and highlights the following issues.
“In early 2025, my committee was alarmed to learn that since December 2023 round logs exported from PNG were no longer subjected to independent scrutiny.”
The requirement of an independent pre-shipment inspection and monitoring facility to oversee the exports of round log exports was a direct result of the 1994 Tos Barnett Forestry Inquiry finding that exposed the then Department of Forestry (now PNG Forest Authority-PNGFA) as being severely compromised to foreign cartels. In 1994 the round log pre-shipment inspection services of SGS Ltd was engaged to satisfy this requirement.
“My committee heard that the services of SGS had been discontinued in December in 2023 and that PNGFA had since assumed their pre-shipment inspection role. We are inquiring into how these arrangements are deemed independent. And whether PNGFA has the technical and physical capacity to assume the SGS functions given their abrupt departure. From last Wednesdays hearing the Committee is yet to be convinced of this.”
SGS publicly available material indicates that over last 20 years its service has detected large discrepancies in almost every shipment, in breach of Export Logging Permits in overloading log volumes and mis declaring log species.
“As Chairman and a member of Parliament, I and my Committee members are concerned of the risks exposed to PNG since PNGFA assumed SGS roles, including the exposure of further grounds for international blacklisting,” Mr Juffa said.
The Committee expressed its concerns to the Treasury representative at the hearing to immediately settle to re-engage SGS or facilitate a new PSI facility. To renew SGS engagement for K5 or 6 million is worth the effort because Customs Duty log export collections stand at around K400M annually as reported by the Commissioner of Customs at the hearing.
The Committee is examining the tendency to create Authorities and Agencies stemming from expressed inefficiencies of Government Departments and as to whether they actually achieve the objectives they were created for.
“The preliminary view of my committee is that for most, this has ended up being administratively and financially flawed and they appear to have developed a life of their own with no actual accountability to proper scrutiny for the people of PNG. My committee stands to create an environment of accountability and reform in the over bloated and underperforming service delivery vehicle of Government. “
“The recent creation of the recent National Monitoring and Coordination Authority is a step in the right direction but there must be accountability to the people and not risk being captured by Executive Government”
“The Committee will be bringing to Parliament proposed changes to the current human resource management sector of Government to ensure it is actively right sizing itself to effectively and efficiently deliver vital services to the people of PNG. We cannot go another 50 years in the current direction,” Mr. Juffa concluded.
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