Manus refugees' allowance and food rations stopped amid relocation push to Port Moresby

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/aug/29/manus-refugees-allowance-and-food-rations-stopped-amid-relocation-push-to-port-moresby

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Manus Island refugees have had their weekly allowances and daily food rations stopped as the Papua New Guinea government begins plans to relocate refugees and asylum seekers to Port Moresby.

A 28-year-old Rohingya refugee Haroon Rashid, who is married to a local woman with whom he has two children, has had his weekly allowances and food rations stopped since June this year.

Rashid, who has been in Papua New Guinea for six years, said it had been two months since his rations and payments were cut and he was struggling to provide for his small family with no money or employment.

Rashid said his weekly 100 kina (AU$44) allowance was stopped with no explanation.

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“Usually we’d get 100 kina allowances every Friday of the week. I realised mine stopped in June so I queried with my case worker who said because I was married and living outside of the facility I was not allowed allowances,” Rashid said.

“I tried following up to reason with them, but my calls have since gone unanswered and last I heard my case worker is now in Port Moresby.”

Since the allowances stopped he had been denied daily food rations as well with no proper explanation provided, he said.

“I don’t care about the money or food or going to the [United] States, I just want to work and provide for my family here in Papua New Guinea.”

Rashid is not alone. Refugees who are in Port Moresby seeking medical treatment have also reported having their allowances stopped.

A refugee, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Guardian Australia that himself and close to 100 others living in a hotel in the capital had been affected.

He said his 100 kina weekly allowances stopped in May this year when he was brought over from Manus Island for medical treatment.

“I asked them why and they said, because you are here for medical reasons we won’t pay you.”

Refugees seeking medical treatment in Port Moresby said they now had to sell their daily food rations in order to pay for their expenses.

Meanwhile, the remaining 120 refugees on Manus Island are being given the opportunity to relocate to Bomana in Port Moresby with the promise of residential accommodation, a one-off financial relocation support payment as well as a weekly allowance.

In a recent statement, Petrus Thomas, the Papua New Guinea minister for immigration and border security, said: “Significant progress has been made towards delivering on prime minister James Marape’s commitment to end regional processing in Manus through the relocation to Port Moresby for refugees.”

Thomas said “many refugees have already expressed interest in the relocation and arrangements to facilitate their transfer are in progress”.

Thomas said the offer to relocate to Port Moresby was only made to provide support and assistance to refugees and was not contingent on settlement. He added that PNG continued to encourage those who wanted to settle in the country to do so.

‘I cannot stay, I cannot go’: the Manus refugees trapped in a catch-22

However refugees such as Rashid have none of the necessary documentation required to work in PNG.

“I am calling on the PNG government: I have no other way of earning a living to provide for my family, at least give me some form of documentation that will help me get a job,” Rashid said.

“I am not interested in being resettled elsewhere, but in PNG with my family.”

Rashid fled Myanmar due to ethnic cleansing by government forces and arrived in PNG in 2013. He was found to be a refugee in 2014 and married 23-year-old Manusian woman Molly Noan. The couple have two children – three-year-old Mohammed and two-year-old Almeera.