Who Is Really Running PNG's Airports — And Who Benefits?

by PAUL L. KEBAIJA

Papua New Guinea's aviation sector, the backbone connecting a nation of scattered highlands and remote coastlines, is once again mired in controversy, and this time the questions go straight to the top of the National Airports Corporation (NAC).
Jacob Roland Anga was sworn in as NAC Chairman in late 2025, following what officials described as "years of leadership turbulence" at the corporation. On paper, that appointment was meant to signal stability. In practice, critics allege it has opened the door to exactly the kind of self-serving governance PNG's State-Owned Enterprise reforms were supposed to end.
The allegations are serious. According to sources close to NAC and documents circulating among staff, Anga, during an earlier stint as Head of Audit and General Manager of Finance & Strategic Business at NAC, was sidelined and investigated over alleged reckless spending on a company-issued credit card during an international trip, reportedly racking up expenses that sources within NAC's corridors claim ran into the hundreds of millions of kina. He was, by multiple accounts, eventually terminated. Now the very same NAC has him back, this time as Chairman.
That alone should raise eyebrows. But the more urgent issue is what's allegedly happening now. Critics claim that upon taking the chairmanship, Anga began behaving as though he were Managing Director rather than a board-level overseer, a serious governance breach if true, given the clear separation of powers between chairman and executive management under the Civil Aviation Act. More troubling still are claims that an attempt was made to advertise the MD position outside the established process, only being halted after NAC management and, reportedly, oversight bodies intervened. If accurate, this would represent exactly the kind of politically engineered appointment that State Enterprises Minister William Duma has publicly insisted PNG has moved away from, telling the public just months ago that all SOE chairmen, directors, and CEOs go through independent, overseas-run screening, "not only by the prime minister or ministers."
That commitment now needs to be tested in the open. If reports are true that another candidate, this time from Western Highlands, is being floated for MD outside proper NEC and screening channels, then either the reforms Duma described are real and will stop it, or they are hollow slogans while insiders quietly hand-pick loyalists.
There's also the matter of Anga's private business interests. His company, JRA Limited, has reportedly had its own history of disputed dealings, including a public falling-out with a former operations manager. When a chairman overseeing multi-million-kina airport contracts also runs a private consultancy in adjacent business circles, the potential for conflict of interest is not hypothetical, it's structural, and it demands disclosure.
Most alarming are claims, which we have independently verified and deserve formal investigation, that millions of kina moved into a board member's personal account shortly after a contractor was awarded a major airport upgrade tender. It is potential corruption at the heart of a national infrastructure fund meant to serve ordinary travelers who already endure hours-long queues and decaying rural airstrips.
PNG cannot keep recycling the same individuals through state enterprises regardless of past controversy, nor allow chairmen to function as shadow executives. The Ombudsman Commission, the Fraud Squad, and the Public Service and Department of Personnel Management all have a duty to act, not eventually, but now. The public paid for these airports. They deserve to know, definitively, who is really profiting from them.
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