A refugee on Manus Island has been arrested for the alleged sexual assault of a 10-year-old girl in Lorengau.

The acting provincial police commander, Senior Inspector David Yapu, confirmed that a 28-year-old Pakistani refugee was arrested Monday.

He is alleged to have lured the girl to the Kohai Lodge in Lorengau township, where he is accused of assaulting her.

The man has been charged with four counts of sexual penetration of a child. He is expected to appear in Lorengau court Wednesday afternoon.

The girl was taken to Lorengau general hospital for medical examination, Yapu told the Guardian, where she reported the alleged attack.

“The victim is now with her parents after providing her statements to police on the incident.”

Manus MP and government minister Ronnie Knight told the Guardian: “The sexual assault on a 10-year-old girl must be condemned and the blame must be awarded to the Australian authorities and contractors who have failed miserably to secure such sick people. We will make sure that they [Australian authorities] also will be the target of a class action lawsuit for crimes against Manus people.

“I demand they secure these people and remove them forthwith before our local people massacre them.”

Knight has consistently warned that brooding tensions between Manusians and the refugee population could escalate to serious violence.

Monday’s alleged assault is the second reported incident of sexual assault in Lorengau town involving the transferred population of refugees and asylum seekers.

In January an asylum seeker was arrested and charged over the alleged assault of a 19-year-old student at the Harbourside Hotel. He has been bailed to appear in court at a later date.

The arrest of a refugee forcibly transferred to Manus Island comes at a delicate time for the PNG and Australian governments.

The Australian foreign minister, Julie Bishop, is reportedly scheduled to meet her PNG counterpart Rimbink Pato at Madang on PNG’s north coast this week, as part of the 25th PNG-Australia Ministerial Forum. PNG’s lingering dismay over the Manus Island detention centre has been previously raised in this meeting.

The PNG government is pushing Australia to close the detention centre as quickly as possible and remove the men held there from Manus Island. The PNG supreme court ruled the detention centre ‘illegal and unconstitutional’ more than 10 months ago, and the government has openly stated the camp is a problem and wants it shuttered.

Ferrovial, owner of Broadspectrum, the private contractor employed to operate the offshore detention regime, is refusing to run the camps beyond the end of its current contract in October.

Officials from the United States are on the island for preliminary interviews regarding resettlement of refugees in America, but there is significant uncertainty that that deal will go ahead. The US could take zero, or a handful of refugees from Manus, and still be upholding the deal it struck with Australia, which obliges it only to consider refugees for resettlement.