Transcript
MELVIN LEONGO: It has been almost Eight years since the five scientists including two females from the Institute of Medical Research had gone missing on the coasts of Papua New Guinea's West New Britain province, as they were on their way to conduct a malaria research and they went missing without any trace or clue. The Police and the Papua New Guinea Institute of Medical Research for years has been searching for the missing five including putting up cash rewards. However, a few weeks ago Police Commissioner Gary Baki in a letter stated that due to no new evidence police cannot put resources into it. Papua New Guinea Institute of Medical Research Director Dr William Pomat said that despite it has been eight years, they are still hoping to find them as no bodies or evidence has been found yet.
WILLIAM POMAT: So, with the missing five, this year it's been eight years. They went missing in August 2011. Since then we've made a lot of searches. The police went and did their own investigations, but nothing came out of it. We have a coroner's report that primarily says it is inconclusive. So, for the families we can’t do much in terms of insurance because it's still inconclusive. I wrote to the Police Minister. The Police Commissioner responded about two or three weeks ago, saying that because there's no new evidence police can’t put resources into it. It's still out there and is something that we'll still try and pursue to make sure we know where they are. Somebody knows where they are, so if the boat was found in East Sepik and bodies were found in Manus belonging to the crew then I think somebody will know where those five staff are.
ML: It is suspected that it was an act of sea piracy as the boat was found in the shores of East Sepik Province and two bodies claimed to be from the crews of the boat was found in the Manus province however the bodies where embed as they could not identify the bodies. The Missing five scientists were Leornard Vavana, Gibson Gideon, George Dogoya and two females Tania Oakiva; Lydia Petrus were fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, friends and colleagues who went missing in the line of duty to help the people against the killer disease which is Malaria. Memories still linger in the hearts of friends, families and everyone.
WP: We are still getting families coming here, wanting to know where they are, wanting to receive some compensation. I think they've already got some compensation from it... The wife of one of the scientists still works here with us. So, we still have memories of our five missing scientists, and hopefully we learn from it and don't allow our staff to go out to provinces that are not really right for us. There's been instances where our staff have got out with their lives, so it’s been good that way. Research is not necessarily a holiday. People going out to the field, they do face a lot of problems. Especially our females.