Social media circulation of protest statement not from Unitech SRS, says president

The PNG University of Technology's Student Representative Senate (SRS) president Brent Karol has clarified that the widely circulated protest statement on social media was not sourced from their office.

Karol denied speculations of prompting a nationwide protest early this week.

"That statement is not from the SRS' office so we do not recognise that, until after an Open Forum with all the students," he told NBC News.

The president clarified that SRS actually called a Open Forum yesterday for all students to collectively identify, discuss and come up with pointers on pressing issues affecting Papua New Guineans nationwide.

Most of the issues of discussion were focused mainly on the recent Government decisions, mentioning the restriction of Facebook as a major concern amongst others.

Karol said the SRS will make a decision from the outcome of the forum held yesterday to address their serious concerns and how to address them, through a petition or other outlets agreed by the whole student body.

He unveiled that SRS is likely to finalise a plan on what action to take by the end of this week, that may also include collective ideas from the other Universities around the country.

"We will call for media by the end of this week when we have the drafts put together, if not just from Unitech then we'll have all the other Universities coming together so that we can have a collective mention of issues that are affecting everyone in our nation," he said.

Attending the open forum on behalf of the school's management was the school Registrar, Veronica Thomas.

Ms Thomas told NBC News the management attends and sits in such forums to ensure whatever issues raised and how they are addressed doesn't breach the country's Constitution.