Kokoda track Papua New Guinea Photo: WikiCommons
Papua New Guinea's foremost tourist attraction, the Kokoda Track, reopened on Thursday afternoon after being shut down by landowners over a payment dispute.
The route was made famous by Australian troops in World War II, who clashed with Japanese soldiers along the route throughout much of 1942.
After the war, it became a noted trekking route, attracting mostly Australians following the path the soldiers had taken under far more perilous conditions.
The Mt Kodu landowners had forced the shut down earlier this year because they were not being compensated for turning down a gold mine development on their land.
Any such mine would have impacted on the track environment.
Oro Province encompasses part of the 96 kilometre long track, which runs from near Port Moresby to Kokoda Village, over the Owen Stanley Ranges.
The provincial governor Gary Juffa was at the reopening at Kokoda village on Thursday.
Photo: Adventure Kokoda / Charlie Lynn / Facebook
"Our government has made a commitment to honour the agreement made by a previous government to pay the Kodu landowners the amount of money we had committed to pay them at the time," he said.
"I believe was in 2014 or thereabouts, I forget the exact dates, but it was some time ago. The government then had committed to pay the landowners a certain amount of money, for giving up the opportunity to have a mine on their land, a gold mine, which would have seen them earn significant revenues."
Juffa said the landowners had been pledged K$50 million, of which the government at the time had paid two instalments of K$5m each, but the balance was not paid and the landowners have been waiting patiently for years.
He said the money will again be paid out in instalments, with it going to a specially set up body that will ensure it is spread around the community, as the landowners have been seeking.
The governor said there are also other communities along the route who have suffered as they are required to maintain their areas in the state they were in in the 1940s.
It means no roads or services such as medical clinics.
He said at the end of WW2, "in Australia and PNG, for instance, people went about their lives, but the people living along the Kokoda Trail have been forced to live the way they are since 1945, so continuously making a sacrifice."
He said the governments of both PNG and Australia need to look at how they can help these people.
Juffa said a previous arrangement to help has been maintained by Canberra but not the PNG government, until the Marape government stepped up.
He said the rest of the people along the trail are due about 90 million kina.
