42 PNG Parliement Staff Tested Positive of COVID-19
A total of 42 staff of Papua New Guinea Parliament have tested positive to COVID -19.
Speaker of Parliament Job Pomat announced this in parliament yesterday.
He says the majority of these staff are indirectly employed with the chamber services.
The Speaker told Parliament, they had conducted prior testing for staff that saw these positive cases.
He says, recommendations from the Controller's office now calls for mandatory testing to be conducted for all staff which began this week.
Meanwhile, The Government used its numbers yesterday to adjourn Parliament to August after several Parliamentary staff tested positive to COVID-19.
Parliament rose in the evening after a lengthy debate on COVID-19.
Opposition leader Belden Namah had earlier called on the Government not to adjourn the House, after announcing it was pushing through with a motion of a vote of no confidence in Prime Minister James Marape and had nominated Ialibu Pangia MP Peter O'Neill as its alternate Prime Minister.
However several MPs had raised concerns during a debate in the chamber over the potential spread of COVID-19 at the sitting of parliament.
This stemmed from the announcement by Speaker Job Pomat in the morning that 42 Parliament staff have tested positive to COVID-19.
Mr. Pomat advised that the Controller of the National Pandemic Response, David Manning, had recommended that all staff of the National Parliament undergo COVID-19 testing and that Parliament be adjourned to a later date, with the National Control Center describing this as a serious health and security breach.
Under the law Section 145 2 (b) of the Constitution, a motion of no confidence within 12 months before the next fifth anniversary of the date fixed for the return of the writs at the previous general election shall not be allowed.
NBC / PNG Today
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