1) Australia
Donates Military Planes
2) Two Killed in an attack in Mulia,
Puncak Jaya Regency.
3)
Numbers don't lie: PNG solution flawed
4) Freeport Indonesia Union Eyes Pay
Deal by End of July
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1) Australia Donates Military Planes
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Defense Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro and Australian Ambassador Greg Moriarty signed a deal on military planes donation as Australia plans to send four Hercules C-130 to Indonesia.
"A plane is already set to be sent," said Purnomo. As for the remaining three, the Australian government will have them repaired before having it sent to Indonesia. "The planes will be sent between October 2013 and December 2014," the Minister stated.
The plane's repairs and delivery costs AUS$ 63 million, an agreed amount of deal set between the Indonesia Defense Ministry and Australian defense contractor, Qantas Defence Services (QDS).
Further cooperation will discuss the negotiation over purchasing five Hercules C-138 planes. Minister Purnomo also added that Indonesia plans to send some pilots for training in Australia.
FAIZ NASHRILLAH
---------------------------------------------------------
2) Two Killed in an attack in Mulia, Puncak Jaya Regency.
Two armed groups entered Mulia and attacked the TNI post on Friday afternoon 19 July.
Some weapons were taken before they attackers fled into the bush.
First reports indicate two of the attackers were killed.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By the numbers, shifting the asylum seeker problem to Papua New Guinea simply fails to add up.
The nation already has a substantial headache with refugees – about 9000 people have fled across the border from Indonesian West Papua and remain, in the cold parlance of the United Nations, ''in need of durable solutions''.
By agreeing to shoulder more of the burden of Australia's asylum arrivals, PNG has multiplied a series of sharp domestic challenges.
Australia has also traded places as the dependent country in the relationship, relying on Port Morseby's good will and lessening Canberra's sway when offering advice.
Law and order is clearly one of the most pressing demands confronting the nation of 7 million, a point Prime Minister Kevin Rudd acknowledged before his flying visit earlier in the week that set in train this latest announcement.
A woman was stripped, tortured, doused in petrol and burnt to death in February after villagers in the highlands branded her a witch.
The murder rate in PNG is 13-times that in Australia – and closer to strife-torn Sierra Leone, according to most recent World Health Organisation figures – and the government's response has been retrograde threats to impose the death penalty.
Corruption is also rife. The respected monitoring group Transparency International ranking PNG a lowly 150 out of 176 countries surveyed.
Cash is flooding the economy, with a resources boom in natural gas expected to leap by a massive 25 per cent in 2015, but with it the very real risk this one-time opportunity will be squandered.
Politically, PNG has stumbled and long-term investment is often secondary to short-term gain.
In what amounted to a parliamentary coup in December 2011, Peter O'Neill defied a high court ruling he had acted improperly by removing the former prime minister Sir Michael Somare while the latter was suffering a life-threatening illness.
A dangerous stand-off resulted where for a short time PNG had two prime ministers, two governors-general and two police chiefs.
An election last year cemented O'Neill in office, but he was spared any rebuke for his role in the nation's instability after the prime minister Julia Gillard decided to again embrace the ''Pacific solution''.
The expansion of asylum seeker processing in the country comes despite the significant caveats PNG has put on the refugees convention, but now insists these will not apply to people sent from Christmas Island.
Even so these reservations have drawn UN criticism, along with a section of the PNG migration act that allows the Foreign Minister "to determine a non-citizen to be a refugee" without any details on how such determination is made.
The UN concluded in its most recent periodic review, ''Currently, national legislation does not provide an adequate framework to deal with asylum-seekers and refugees in PNG.''
Kevin Rudd has decided otherwise.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4) Freeport Indonesia Union Eyes Pay Deal by End of July
July 19, 2013
Reuters
photo: m.rtilive.pk
Workers at the Indonesian unit of Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc expect to reach an agreement over pay in less than two weeks, a union official said on Friday, cutting the risk of further disruption at the world's second-biggest copper mine after a deadly accident two months ago.
Freeport halted operations at the copper and gold mine in remote West Papua on May 15, a day after a training area in a tunnel caved in, killing 28 people.
Although the mine has since resumed operations, planned pay talks that began on May 13 were suspended on May 16, before being resumed in late June.
"We expect there will be a pay agreement between the union and Freeport Indonesia management before August so that the Muslim workers will have certainty for their pay before Eid al- Fitr," Papua-based union official Virgo Solossa told Reuters by telephone.
Freeport Indonesia could not be reached for immediate comment.
Relations between Freeport and the union have been strained in recent years following a three-month strike in late 2011 as well as a series of minor spats.
In June, trade union workers called off a planned strike after last-minute talks brokered a deal when they sent a letter to the Freeport management demanding five senior Indonesian employees be suspended after May's accident.
Freeport employs about 24,000 workers, of which three-quarters belong to the union.
The 2011 pay deal is due to end on Sept. 30, and talks had been expected to last up to 60 days.
"We hope that the pay talks can be wrapped up as soon as possible and within the first 30 days period and we don't need to prolong it to another 30 days," Solossa added.
Up for discussion are workers' wages, benefits, rights, obligations and pensions, although the exact pay demand is unknown.
July 19, 2013
Reuters
photo: m.rtilive.pk
Workers at the Indonesian unit of Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc expect to reach an agreement over pay in less than two weeks, a union official said on Friday, cutting the risk of further disruption at the world's second-biggest copper mine after a deadly accident two months ago.
Freeport halted operations at the copper and gold mine in remote West Papua on May 15, a day after a training area in a tunnel caved in, killing 28 people.
Although the mine has since resumed operations, planned pay talks that began on May 13 were suspended on May 16, before being resumed in late June.
"We expect there will be a pay agreement between the union and Freeport Indonesia management before August so that the Muslim workers will have certainty for their pay before Eid al- Fitr," Papua-based union official Virgo Solossa told Reuters by telephone.
Freeport Indonesia could not be reached for immediate comment.
Relations between Freeport and the union have been strained in recent years following a three-month strike in late 2011 as well as a series of minor spats.
In June, trade union workers called off a planned strike after last-minute talks brokered a deal when they sent a letter to the Freeport management demanding five senior Indonesian employees be suspended after May's accident.
Freeport employs about 24,000 workers, of which three-quarters belong to the union.
The 2011 pay deal is due to end on Sept. 30, and talks had been expected to last up to 60 days.
"We hope that the pay talks can be wrapped up as soon as possible and within the first 30 days period and we don't need to prolong it to another 30 days," Solossa added.
Up for discussion are workers' wages, benefits, rights, obligations and pensions, although the exact pay demand is unknown.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.