Kapris killed

PAPUA New Guinea’s most wanted man, William Kapris, has been killed by police. The convicted bank robber, who had been on the run for the last 10 weeks, was shot dead near Doa in Central, about 45km northwest of Port Moresby. Kapris’ accomplice Raphael Walimini, a convicted murderer, was also killed in the shootout, which ended a massive manhunt by police who had offered a reward of K100,000 each for the pair. Five other people, including two women and a Defence Force soldier, who were travelling with Kapris and Walimini, have been arrested and locked up at the Boroko police cells. Assistant Police Commander Jim Andrews told reporters on Monday night that police had gone to Doa to apprehend the escapees after a tip off. “After three months of operations ... today we caught up with him following a tip-off from the public. As we were moving in to apprehend them, there was an exchange of fire,” Andrews told reporters on Monday night. He added that no police officers were injured in the shootout. The Port Moresby General Hospital premises was a scene of screaming red and blue lights and loud horns as a police convoy, numbering more than 20 vehicles escorted the corpses to the morgue at around 10.10pm. As word of the capture and shooting dead of the country’s notorious criminal spread throughout the city, the populace outside the hospital premises grew in numbers. Security was stepped up and only a few people were allowed in. The bodies of Kapris and Walimini were laid out inside the morgue area where police forensics officers quickly moved in and took over. They were soon joined by flashes from reporters’ cameras. Bullet wounds were visible in most parts of their bodies, particularly below their knees. For about an hour, uniformed and media personnel continued in and out of the morgue area, observing and taking photographs of the corpses. When all the excitement finally subsided and the hospital gates opened, members of the public who had gathered outside moved in. However, control was again reinforced when police told people that the hospital grounds belonged to the sick. Kapris and Walimini were inside the morgue and there was nothing more to see that Monday night. According to police, more than 30 Royal PNG Constabulary personnel were used in the operation to recapture Kapris, who was known in PNG for a series of robberies at Bank South Pacific branches. Kapris and Walimini escaped Port Moresby’s Bomana prison on May 14 after walking out the front gate. In 2010, the country’s most wanted serial bank robber escaped from custody in a Toyota truck after taking a warder hostage. He was aided that time by a woman who, posing as a lawyer, pulled a gun on guards. He was rearrested a short time later, along with several jail staff who allegedly assisted his escape. It was not the first time Kapris had escaped PNG’s justice system. Before being captured in 2008, he had been on the run for eight years after escaping police detention while convalescing at Port Moresby General Hospital. Source: The National, Wednesday July 24th, 2013

MEDIA WORK SHOP ON CLIMATE CHANGE

These are some of the shots taken at the Office of the Climate Change during the two days Media Workshop on Climate Change.

Post Courier Editor Alexander Rheeney and Hon. Patrick Pruaicht Minister for Forestry and Climate Change.

My Group during the plenary discussion.

Got home tired after the first day of the work shop.

Your truly with Joy Kiseelpar of PNGFM.

Steamship presenting K15,000 to the Office of Climate Change and Developemnt (OCCD) for its open day on the 16th of August 2013.

My Group for the plenary session

Some of the participants of the Media Work Shop.

The food was awesome.

The Group of Media Personal and others who attended the Workshop.

DEMOCRACY IS WONDERFUL

By: Sig Nordal Very interesting posts have been made in this discussion group called the Sharp Talk. We are happy to read these discussions as it shows that the people of Papua New Guinea are conscious about what is going on in their society and also, discussion groups like these help to ensure that companies and governments are aware that they are being monitored. It is definitely needed to have more discussion groups like these in PNG and in all of our efforts in working in PNG have been to stress the importance of that point. All of of the 400 PNG members in our LinkedIn Group will know that this project that we are doing is absolutely not new. In fact, we constructed our first house in PNG in 2009, and we still have numerous houses at the harbor which are for the benefit of the government of PNG. Shortly after we did the housing contract with the government of PNG and imported houses to the country we did so in good faith. Nevertheless, the houses remain unpaid. This project that we are doing now was first started as a conventional housing project where people were to finance their own houses. It soon became clear that the high rental rates in PNG had "eaten away" people's savings and they were unable to come up with a down payment therefore, we designed a transaction whereby people can buy houses utilizing traditional mortgages and this allows the people to have no down payment. It is interesting to note that despite the fact that Amazon Realty Ltd. is a duly registered PNG company, with all records filed, and a company that possesses over 1500 subdivided lots should be attacked in this way. However, there is always another side to the coin and perhaps that is what this group wants us to do; we can bring all of our houses to PNG and sell them in the open market to the highest bidder but then way we would not be helping the working people, would we? There is one thing that we should all remember and that is that democracy allows us to voice our opinions about various matters but with democracy comes great responsibility. People must do their homework before they start accusing people and as all records and information about Amazon Realty are readily available perhaps the initiator of this discussion should have exercised the responsibility in checking if the statements made are actually true. To verify is necessary before statements are made. When a reference is made to articles in Post Courier one should read our comments about the horrific consequences of scams and how we have systematically tried to help Papua New Guineans avoid precisely that. The scams in PNG are far reaching, and we have pointed that out also, and those include misuse of natural resources, misuse of logging rights, housing scams, and most recently rental scams. Do you think it makes any sense that an apartment in PNG costs more to rent than an apartment in London or even Los Angeles? There are people that have opposed our program for obvious reasons as they benefit from the high rental situation. Again, I want to thank everyone in this group for their comments and I welcome them to contact us if they need any further clarification and we encourage you to continue to stay on guard towards the various misuse of PNG's resources, bribery, and other such issues all of which destroy the democracy. We look forward to hearing from you and please do not hesitate to contact us at mypnghouse@gmail.com.(We use gmail because it is an excellent platform to communicate with people as we work in a very open way as all of our clients know).