Missing at Sea, Missing in Waigani

by PAUL L. KEBAIJA

When the two boats went down off the Duke of York Islands on Saturday 18 July, twenty-seven people went into the water. Fourteen adults. Eleven children. Among them were at least four officers of the East New Britain Provincial Health Authority, travelling with their families. Two bodies have since been recovered off Djaul Island. The families of the rest are still waiting on the sea.

Every one of those health workers answered, ultimately, to one man: Dr Billy Joseph, Minister for Health. And the national disaster apparatus that should have surged behind the provincial search answered to the same man, because Joseph also holds responsibility for Disaster and Emergency Services.

He cannot plead that the job was new to him. When Prime Minister James Marape reshuffled his Cabinet on 15 July, he did not hand Joseph the disaster portfolio Joseph already had it. The reshuffle merely added Health, creating precisely the dual mandate that this tragedy would test three days later. The scenario for which his twin portfolios exist arrived almost immediately: his own ministry's workers, lost at sea, in a mass-casualty maritime disaster demanding national coordination.

So where was he?

The provincial response was immediate and, by all accounts, committed. The Provincial Disaster Office launched a search within hours of the 4.51pm alert. Disaster Committee chairman Levi Mano briefed anxious crowds in Kokopo. Provincial police commander Superintendent Amanda Kates put vessels on the water. Local MP Jelta Wong spoke for grieving communities. A National Government helicopter was made available through the National Disaster Office. The machinery moved.

The Minister is not visibly available , no statement on the tragedy had been issued by Minister Joseph's office, no press appearance made, no visit to East New Britain reported.] Instead, it was the Prime Minister who issued the National Government's message of support, who commended the searchers, who called the nation to prayer. Which raises the question this piece exists to ask: when the disaster minister's own health workers are among the missing, why is the Prime Minister doing the disaster minister's job?

Marape sold his reshuffle as putting the right leaders in the right portfolios. Within seventy-two hours, that claim met its first test. It is worth remembering that Joseph came to this expanded role only months after stepping aside from Defence to allow investigation of allegations — unresolved, and he is entitled to that presumption — concerning army recruitment. The question of Marape's judgement in stacking life-and-death portfolios on him is fair, and it is now urgent.

No one blames a minister for the sea. Weather capsized those boats, not Waigani. But ministers are appointed for the hours after the alarm, when visible national leadership tells searching communities they are not alone. In those hours, East New Britain saw its own leaders, and its Prime Minister. Its Minister for Health and Disaster, it did not see.