Friday, November 19, 2010

Ex-soldier walks away with K91,000

By JULIA DAIA BORE

 

A RETIRED soldier who waited for so many years to get his entitlements from the Defence Force has been paid K91,000, The National reports.

Another ex-soldier received K50,000, the lowest paid out up to yesterday.

Both were among 14 already paid, out of 334 ex-servicemen who would be paid a total of K12.3 million for the years spent serving the force.

The pay-outs began on Tuesday, with K200,000 already paid out to the ex-servicemen.

Facilitator in the pay-out exercise Col Paul Mai confirmed yesterday that the payments were taking place at Murray Barracks in Port Moresby.

He said because of no public listing on who was among the 334 eligible recipients, only 14 people had turned up these past few days.

Mai was hopeful that more would turn up today following newspaper advertisements listing the recipients.

The National Executive Council had sanctioned the pay-outs in decision No.159 of Aug 5 this year. However, the cheque payments were not processed until funding was made available recently.

PNGDF chief of staff Capt (navy) Alois Tom Urr had instructed on Monday that following NEC approval after screening the status of each group, 334 ex-servicemen were listed for payments.

Workers from the office of the attorney-general were assisting PNG personnel with administering the pay-outs.

Urr also directed that “the payments will not be released to a third party, including lawyers”.

“In the event where a serviceman has died, his next of kin with proper identification will be paid.

“No payment will be made if there is confusion and conflict over the identification of an ex-serviceman or his dependants. In such cases, the cheque will be returned to the AG’s office to be administered through the public curator’s office,” Urr said.

Security has been tightened at the pay-out station.

 

 

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