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Thank you Stephen. But what about the emissions from the bushfires?

Interesting! My take aways: collect the data that is necessary for the program; ensure a role for stakeholders and implementers in the data collection; and assess the context and its implications for the program. Thank you

Politics since Roman times: panem and circenses. Keep city dwellers (including students in the capital) happy and distracted. What happens in rural areas is irrelevant, and in fact the picture there is clear: total neglect since independence. No roads, no piped drinking water, no sanitation, no affordable electricity, no properly supplied, staff and functioning clinics or schools, and soon no access to a cell phone.

Prof. Howes is being very polite. Peter O'Neill was an unmitigated disaster. During his tenure, economic growth in the non-resource sector diminished each and every year, despite him bragging about the economy. At some point, it was uncertain whether the country could pay its fuel bill, and the supermarket ran out of vegetables. In the country side it was much worse. In 2014, because of his misguided economic policies, and El Niño induced drought, there was a fully fledged famine in the highlands, and the World Food Program had to give food to 250,000 people. Meanwhile, judges, journalists, academics or professionals who called out corruption were continuously harassed, and if foreign simply kicked out of the country. Since the stolen 2017 elections, SHP/Hela and Enga provinces have been suffering a civil war between various clans and tribes, a situation conveniently ignored. Miraculously in May 2019 Parliamentary democracy worked and Peter O'Neill lost support for being too selfish and greedy dealing with the Chinese and resource companies. The new crew, is mostly the old crew, and equally clueless and callously ignoring the needs of the good people of PNG.

Thank you all for your views. Lets not undermine the power of God Almighty to raise a group of people in all sectors of our country to stand up and fight CORRUPTION. Once that is done and the battle won, the next agenda would be to realize Vision 2050. Otherwise, the rich and greedy people are getting richer, the poor and disadvantaged people strive to meet daily needs. I am not a prophet but let me assure you that law and order problems will continue to increase to a point where military rule will no longer be an option but a necessaity to save a sinking nation. Can someone please do a serious study in this subject and publish findings for public consumption.

Hi Dr Amanda Watson. Thanks for the questions. Making decisions as politicians and bureaucrats to terminate a person's life who has been convicted of crimes punishable by death is a very difficult and tough choice. It means you are making decisions to determine whether that person (a human being like yourself) must be killed or not based on the law. Since the re-introduction of the death penalty in PNG till now, both politicians and senior bureaucrats responsible for this issue, when answering questions relating to the death penalty especially on PUBLIC MEDIA, they seem to speak for themselves rather than being the office holders, they speak with sympathy for those convicted ones and they speak to defend themselves and not the law. Two obvious phrases that they would use are 'PNG being the Christian Country' and 'life imprisonment' and I think that's exactly how PMJM responded to the Hon Parkop's questions concerning the 10 people who are on death row. But PMJM made very good points by proposing to convert prison camps to an industry and of course to impose life imprisonment instead for those on death row. The so-called 'study tour' (also known as fact-finding mission) has cost US$600,000 according to the current deputy PM and justice minister the Hon Steven Davis, which is quite a lot of money and could have been used to convert prison camps to an industry suggested by PMJM earlier. They toured several countries in Asia and I think in the USA (a prison in the State of California) in 2008 despite the UN Human Rights Resolution in 2003 on the death penalty that PNG with 74 countries voted in favour to abolish the death penalty and establish a moratorium on executions. I think time and money could have been saved for better use if the government had complied with 2003 UNHR resolution and perhaps provided better recommendations in terms of whether to abolish the death penalty or impose life imprisonment instead.

We can add 'innovation' to the mix. I have seen a plethora of 'innovations' identified based on the experience and learning of people involved in projects/programs which are not able to be acted on due to inflexible operational systems, and adherence to design documents and rigid thinking. Innovation is needed within donors to free up processes and systems, rather than just looking externally through innovation funds.

Thank you to the seven people who have taken the trouble to share their thoughts regarding mandatory mobile phone SIM card registration in Papua New Guinea. In response to Moses Sakai’s concerns about NICTA holding registration information, please note that the registration databases are not held by NICTA. In fact, the databases are held by the telecommunication companies themselves, i.e. Digicel and the entity that is currently being formed out of a merger of bmobile Vodafone and Telikom. John Purre, if a customer is uncertain about whether or not their SIM card has been registered, they should be able to ask their telecommunication provider. The physical location of some mobile phone handsets can be traced, for instance if the owner misplaces the handset or if it is stolen. You also asked how the Supreme Court’s ruling would benefit the general public. It may be that compulsory registration means that certain citizens are able to ask the police to pursue criminals who have been harassing them via their mobile phones. My concern though is that the process may lead to the deactivation of many mobile phones. Thanks again to those who have posted comments. Other comments are always welcome. Amanda 🙂 Dr Amanda H A Watson

Thanks Nicola. This is a critical piece of thinking at the moment - as we watch really brilliant and appropriate adaptive programs being dismantled by their inability to ‘fit the processes’ which are often used as a trump card by bureaucracies. Time to make the processes fit the program if we are serious about effective development.

Am sorry for my people in the village, especially my mum and dad. If they (NICTA) deactivate all the unregistered SIM Cards then I will suffer the most because NO SIM registration roll out in my district and village. Their rights of using the phone will be deprived.

Thanks for the update Dr Watson on SIM card registration and deactivation. To be honest, I feel unsafe when surfing the internet because all my SIM cards are registered because I know for sure that there are three entities that are tracking and tracing my online activities in terms of the websites that I'm visiting. 1. NICTA through the registration of the SIM card, 2. The web browser that I'm using 3. The website that I'm visiting through the use of cookies For the 2nd and 3rd, it's safe because they have the Privacy Policy that would protect user's privacy and even a web user can leave a visited website untraceable with the use of a strong VPN such as Nord VPN despite of the Privacy Policy. However, as a regular internet user, I'm not sure about the 1st one in terms of whether my privacy is safe or not even with the use of strong VPN like NordVPN. Secondly, is it necessary for government through NICTA to impose fines on telecommunication companies because of their lack of registering users SIM cards on time? This is bad. NICTA should at least give additional time to telecommunication companies to register unregistered SIM cards because NICTA started this. Otherwise it would be better if the government just do away with this Compulsory SIM card registration.

I think it's about time, we go through with diactivation of sim cards. Digicel is eating away huge amounts of money from it's users without undermining how dificult it's customers face, no potty on poor customers. All non registered customers nowadays pay more than the registered customers, and they feel the pain, but hard to talk over coz that's the service they are using. Deactivation will bring us back to old ways that we would not need phones anymore.