The Bill for Work That Was Never Done

By MICHAEL J. PASSINGAN

K65 million. One page of provincial letterhead, dated 24 August 2026, addressed to Finance Minister Thomas Opa. Ten million for Nembi Plateau Road sealing. Forty-five million for PNG Unity Games infrastructure, warrants WA84740393 and WA80470202. Ten million for the Semin School of Excellence. The tone is immaculate. The Governor seeks urgent intervention. The Governor offers the assurances of his highest consideration.

The Governor is invoicing the nation for a stadium that isn't built, a road that isn't sealed, and an event that has already left his province.

Take the Games first, because the Games are the whole method in miniature. Southern Highlands held hosting rights for years and spent those years not hosting. Elections. COVID. Security. Venues. Funding delays. Every deferral came with an explanation and a warrant. The projected cost climbed toward K270 million and Oiyarep Stadium still could not meet operational standard, no water, no sanitation, nowhere to sleep the athletes. In October 2025 Finance released K30 million tied to finishing it. Peter Nupiri, once inside Powi's own circle, alleges that K10 million reached the contractor and K20 million went to Host Organising Committee operations and unspecified works, with over K48 million still owed on the job. Provincial legal advice is reported to have flagged possible misappropriation under the Public Finance Management Act.

Powi and Administrator David Kelma say the Finance Minister later widened the permitted purpose, lodges, generators, a nursing school, committee costs. Read that defence again. It is not a denial. It is a man explaining that stadium money did not build a stadium and that somebody in Waigani signed off afterwards.

Then the NEC moved the 2026 Games to Port Moresby, deferred Southern Highlands to 2028, and ordered an independent review of every Games contract in the province.

Powi wrote this letter after that. He asks for K45 million to complete "two major stadium facilities" for a competition his province is no longer hosting. He pleads a "limited timeframe" that has been extended by two years. He does not mention the relocation. He does not mention the audit. He is asking the Department of Finance to top up the exact pot of money that is currently under investigation, and he is asking them to do it quickly.

The road is the same story with the same contractor. Construct Oceanic took the Nembi Plateau sealing job in 2021, K221.8 million, 58.6 kilometres. Roughly K120 million drawn, including a fat advance, against something near 36 percent delivered. Powi himself once stood up and demanded to know why the work had stopped. Five years on, his answer is another K10 million, and he wants it sent "directly" to the Southern Highlands Provincial Government rather than through the Works channel where, by his own letter, the paperwork already sits. He is not asking for the road to be finished. He is asking to be handed the cheque.

The third item is four sentences long and that is the point. The Semin School of Excellence gets no scope, no completion figure, no acquittal of whatever came before, nothing but the number. Semin is in the Nembi Plateau. So is the road. Two of three requests point at the same ground in Nipa-Kutubu, the district whose interests Powi defended so loudly when Kumul Petroleum's Wapu Sonk was suspended, when he called it an insult to the whole province before a single fact was established.

None of this is new. Powi has been declared twice under special-circumstances provisions, both times after counting in Mendi dissolved into destroyed ballots, disputed boxes and gunfire. In 2018 the province burned an Air Niugini aircraft, its own courthouse and his residence. A contempt case over court-nullified LLG presidents kept on the provincial payroll ground on for years before the Supreme Court finally disposed of it in 2026. Earlier misappropriation allegations were dismissed as malicious and produced no convictions. He has never been convicted of anything. That is not the same as having been cleared, and after fifteen years the Nembi Plateau is still mud.

So the question for Thomas Opa is not whether the warrants are approved. It is why a governor under audit is permitted to write his own release schedule.

Three documents settle it. The itemised acquittal of the October 2025 K30 million. Construct Oceanic's certified progress claims against every kina paid. The scope and status of Semin. Produce them and the money should go tomorrow.

Fifteen years of urgency, and not one of those three documents has ever been published.

@FOLLOWERS