TRANSCRIPT:
A state of emergency is in place in Papua New Guinea for the next two weeks after riots and looting left 16 people dead.
Nine died in the capital Port Moresby and another seven were killed in PNG's second largest second city, Lae.
Prime Minister James Marape has made the emergency declaration and suspended the chief of police and senior government bureaucrats.
He says troops are on standby to act if there's more unrest.
"We have over a thousand men from defence force ready, on standby, to come in and work under a state emergency laws within the next 14 days to step in, whatever necessary to contain, contain any situations that may arise going forward into the future.”
The violence started on Wednesday after police and other public servants took part in a demonstration in the capital Port Moresby over a payroll issue.
They decided to walk off the job and that led to hundreds of people taking advantage of their absence to loot shops and set them on fire.
Ian Clough runs a retail group in Papua New Guinea.
He told the ABC it was some of the worst violence he'd seen.
“48 years of independence, I can’t recall in my lifetime seeing this level of devastation in a single day. It’s just senseless, it’s unacceptable and we just need to have a really good hard look at ourselves and challenge to how we got to this place and what we’re doing to make sure we come out of it pretty quickly.”
Prime Minister Marape says a full administrative and criminal investigation will take place.
"Including look at police, look at treasury, looking at finance, looking at personal management (inaudible). So we ensure that this sort of thing does not happen again. And more importantly, we secure democracy. We secure the rule of law.”
Dr Elizabeth Kopel is from the PNG National Research Institute.
She says the government needs to ensure it responds in a considered way.
"The government cannot brush this off as an isolated incident. It will keep coming back to haunt us over and over if we don;t look for a lasting solution."
Dr Kopel says the rioting was opportunistic, carried out by unemployed people some of whom are literally starving.
She says only about 15 per cent of Papua New Guineans are employed and paying tax, and some of them are struggling too.
"People are upset because the cost of living has increased so much and salaries have not increased in a long time and so it's people who are really struggling to survive."
