A Papua New Guinea community leader says the people of Lae are so frustrated at government inaction over illegal settlements that they are willing to break the law to resolve the situation
Community groups are threatening a take-over of the power pylons on their land if the Morobe Provincial government fails to remove the settlements.
But the Morobe Provincial Governor, Luther Wenge, says the matter is not easy to deal with.
He says it needs to be established whether the settlers are living on State land or Customary land before any evictions could take place.
And even then Mr Wenge says there could be problems.
"We can't evict everyone. Not all the people who live there cause trouble, most of them are law-abiding citizens and we will try and get the leaders from those settlements to find out who did the trouble and we will get the police to apprehend them and they will have to stand and face the law."
