Labu Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in Huon Gulf District, Morobe has a greater chance of succeeding. This was the  statement from Japan Development Institute (JDI) chairman Dr. Shoichi Kobayasi. He said Labu SEZ has a greater potential of succeeding because it will feature an important component having a sea port within the zone. Kobayasi urged traditional landowners and important stakeholders including the district and provincial administration to work together in addressing issues which will pave the way forward to achieve the reality of the project. JDI is currently doing inspection rounds throughout the country and will formulate a SEZ master plan to guide the national government by next year. The Minister for International Trade and Investment Richard Maru has affirmed that Labu including other SEZ would place the country in a pathway to compete with other growing economies at an International stage. Maru announced that PNG will anchor investors at SEZs which will set the country to challenge at the highest phase. Anchor investors are the first foreign investors who will settle in the SEZs and spearhead developments and operate their industries. He stated that currently there are 18 SEZs in the country and his ministry is looking at involving all the stakeholders to drive the country's economy forward. Landowners, District Administration and Provincial administration were all present at a meeting when JDI chairman and minister made these announcements.

Kiunga Vocational Training Center in Western Province was privileged to receive donations of renovation supplies from the PNG Adventist Tertiary Student Association this week. The renovations supplies include two 9000L tuffa tanks, lawn mower and plumbing and building materials costing over K100 000. During the presentation PNG ATSA President Steward Alu Kalan said that they wanted to show appreciation to the Administration of Kiunga Vocational Training Center and the board of Management for accommodating over 300 students at their convention. “In the one week convention, students realized that facilities are deteriorating and needed maintenance." With the support, they would now be able to make renovations to the old classroom buildings, toilet and to ensure more clean water is available for drinking. Administrator of Kiunga Vocational Training Center Hellen Dupnai was pleased by the donations and thanked the PNG ATSA and their leaders for the support back to the vocational center. “This is a very important institution and the only vocational training center in North Fly but the Government does not focus much on it to improving the facilities so we we really appreciate the support”.

Christmas operations in the East Sepik Province began on Monday afternoon after hosting a PPC meeting with all the Police Stations Commander in the province. That's according to the new Provincial Police Commander for East Sepik Province Superintendent Christopher Tamari. PPC Tamari said the East Sepik Provincial government has allocated K150 000 to help the roll out of the Christmas operations. District Government have also pledged and they are assisting the Police Stations Commander in each of the districts. Superintendent Tamari stated, even though he is new to the place he is confident he can provide leadership using his experience and knowledge of service in other provinces. He further encouraged the people of East Sepik to abide to the law during this festive season. With no outside deployment to the province, Superintendent Tamari said he would utilize the reservists and available number of police force on ground. “My aim is to have a safe Christmas and see the police force work in partnership with the people of Wewak for a common good.”

In a bid to strengthen community-embedded capacities in digital skills, digital agriculture, and financial inclusion in the Sepik region of Papua New Guinea, the EU Funded UN Joint STREIT Programme organised an intensive training for Maprik Secondary School's teachers and lead farmers on Digital Skills and Financial Literacy modules. The training was aimed at building trainees' capacities as future Trainers of Trainers (ToTs) or Coaches. Held in close collaboration with the PNG National Information & Communication Technology Authority (NICTA), this two-day event attracted 30 participants, including three model farmers and female teachers (comprising 40% of total attendees). It was the first of a series of similar trainings envisaged by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), as part of the EU-STREIT PNG Programme, for stakeholders in East Sepik Province using resource centre as a conduit. "This training enhanced the capacity of local farmers and MSMEs on relevant ICT applications and financial services to improve teachers and lead farmers' understanding and use of communication tools, including messenger services and social media applications. The training also increased understanding and appreciation of the enabling role of digital technologies, the gaps and barriers that constrain farmers and MSMEs from using ICTs in their agri-businesses and means to overcome the barriers using relevant and available tools, processes, and systems" said Kanagat Alyshbaev, the ITU Project Officer. This learning opportunity organised to "improve agriculture productivity, financial management and marketingAGRI for cost-effectiveness, efficiency, and sustainability, and to increase literacy and knowledge on financial services and personal financial management," explained Sharad Bangari, the UNCDF Digital & Agri Finance Specialist. This training covered six modules, including Digital Literacy, Internet and Web 2.0, Social Networking for Development, Social Media for Agri-Business and Marketing, Financial Literacy, Remote Collaboration (Google Services and Dropbox), and Online Virtual Communication. Deputy Principal of the Maprik Secondary School, Molland Saluali while appreciating the EU-STREIT PNG Programme for supporting school’s resource centre in terms of improving IT skills and sustainability approach, said “these trainings are very useful for us and students and farmers that almost most of the students are coming from rural areas. This will give excellent opportunity that students will go back to villages and share and disseminate the knowledge and experience that they learned. I believe this will be a good start on regular support and this will be a new era of doing business in the agriculture value chain.” This initiative was well received and embraced by the participants, as many expressed the need for immediate application of some of the common tools, such as social media in teaching, marketing, collaboration, and information access. Participants also expressed that there are far more benefits that could be derived from smartphones, simple technologies, and available services. The training also helped overcome some of the long-held scepticism on their uses and how much value the ICTs can offer in their day-to-day practices in agriculture and finance. This training covered six modules, including Digital Literacy, Internet and Web 2.0, Social Networking for Development, Social Media for Agri-Business and Marketing, Financial Literacy, Remote Collaboration (Google Services and Dropbox), and Online Virtual Communication. Deputy Principal of the Maprik Secondary School, Molland Saluali while appreciating the EU-STREIT PNG Programme for supporting school’s resource centre in terms of improving IT skills and sustainability approach, said “these trainings are very useful for us and students and farmers that almost most of the students are coming from rural areas. This will give excellent opportunity that students will go back to villages and share and disseminate the knowledge and experience that they learned. I believe this will be a good start on regular support and this will be a new era of doing business in the agriculture value chain.” This initiative was well received and embraced by the participants, as many expressed the need for immediate application of some of the common tools, such as social media in teaching, marketing, collaboration, and information access. Participants also expressed that there are far more benefits that could be derived from smartphones, simple technologies, and available services. The training also helped overcome some of the long-held scepticism on their uses and how much value the ICTs can offer in their day-to-day practices in agriculture and finance. “Two days training gave us a good opportunity to learn and how to use the digital skills, e-agriculture, online marketing tools in our education sector as well as in community. It is a very good to teach people in rural areas how to use digital and social media platforms. It will be useful for me that we will teach students and farmer on what I learned here. I am very interested in continuation of such trainings in future,” added Fredah Vitikut, a Business Management and Economics teacher who attended the training. East and West Sepik provinces are largely agriculture-based provinces. However, lack of access to credible and timely information is one of the setbacks of agricultural advancement in the region. In this context, ICTs offer enormous opportunities for enhanced agricultural innovation for food security, income, and economic growth. The emerging ICT developments, such as widespread mobile adoption, increasing use of broadband internet, and availability of digital applications will address some of the agriculture challenges in this information age. These include improved access and use of digital financial solutions to support communities for improved financial transactions and savings. Digital agriculture or E-agriculture is strongly perceived under the EU-STREIT PNG framework as a key mechanism for enhanced agriculture production, entrepreneurship, and improved livelihood in the Sepiks. The EU-STREIT PNG Programme, being implemented as a UN Joint Programme (FAO as the leading agency, and ILO, ITU, UNCDF and UNDP as partners), is the largest grant-funded Programme of the European Union in the country and the Pacific region. The Programme aims to help improve the lives of the people from East and West Sepik provinces by focusing on increasing sustainable and inclusive economic development of rural areas through improved economic returns and opportunities from cocoa, vanilla and fishery value chains while strengthening and improving the efficiency of value chain enablers, including the business environment and supporting sustainable, climate-proof transport and energy infrastructure development.

The 2022 National Touch football championship was held at the Eriku oval in Lae. A four days tournament held last week which saw participating teams from Chimbu, Kainantu, Kundiawa, East and West New Britain as well as the host of the tournament Lae Corperate Touch. Referee Development and Technical officer  Billy Karava said, the tournament comprised of seven divisions which saw all teams play hard to win the championship in each of these divisions. Lae Corperate Touch team was the favorite and announced the 2022 champions of the tournament while Sohe won in the Junior Boys, Huon Corperate for Master’s Division, Lae Corperate for Senior Women’s, Finchaffen for Men’s Master’s, Popondetta for Open mix, Lae Corperate for open men’s and open women’s division. Mr. Karava confirmed that 2023 championship will be hosted in Oro Province and a final selection will be made to represent Team PNG at the Pacific Games in the Solomon Islands. “I am reaching out to the newly established Touch Associations to assist them in technical terms” “Also to those teams that didn’t take part in this year’s Championship, I urge you to prepare for the 2023 National Championship that will be held in Popondetta.” Mr. Karava thanked the PNG Touch Federation for their support successfully hosting this year’s National Championship. He also acknowledged the participating teams for making their time to take part and showing great determination and challenge in the sport.

A total of 190 students graduated on Tuesday from the Institute Business Studies College of TVET at six mile campus in Port Moresby. Chancellor of Institute Business Studies College Gabriel Pepson gave the key note speech at the 10th graduation as special awards were presented to the top performing students in Certificate three and certificate four programs. Certificate three they offer Business studies, Accounting and Information Technology whilst in Certificate four an additional course offered is Human Resource Management. Vice Chancellor Dr. Ramachandran Arunacha said, these certificate programs are pathways to joining degree program in other universities in the country and abroad. Dr. Ramachandran said this year was challenging due to the pandemic, regardless of all those challenges they were able to conclude the year successfully and see their students graduate. “We introduced module classes for students by which they had the platform online to access academic information and keep the progress of their learning and studies.”

The festive season operations in East New Britain Province has officially been launched this week on Monday with police now on full duty, according to ENB Acting Police Commander Senior Inspector, Gabriel Bandi. The three major stations in ENB which are Kokopo, Rabaul and Kerevat have been on festive period duty since Monday and police personnel are working around the clock to ensure public safety is upheld. The ENB police personnel will be assisted by a Mobile Squad from Kerowagi in Simbu Province to roll out the festive operations. According to acting police boss Bandi, operations will cover both land and sea with the police monitoring dinghies and other water vessels travelling to and from New Ireland, Duke of York Islands including Kokopo to Pomio. Snr Inspector Bandi further made a call to all East New Britain citizens to celebrate the festive season in the right state of mind and keep away from conducting illegal activities. “It is important for the public to celebrate in true spirit during the festive season or face the full force of the law." He also advised drivers and motorists to take caution whilst travelling on the highway and warned that alcohol consumption while driving has nil tolerance and will be dealt with accordingly by police. The festive operation will continue until the 2nd of January 2023 with police aiming to promote a safe festive period for the people of East New Britain Province.

The PNG Adventists Tertiary Students Association Convention (ATSA) was officially launched yesterday Monday 12th December at the Kiunga Vocational Center in Kiunga town, Western province and should include activities aimed at assisting the communities. The Convention is scheduled to go for a week with different sessions to be held by Pastor Gideon Kend and Pastor Willie Siso along with other facilitating Pastors. Apart from these sessions, each of the tertiary institutions have sessions allocated to do brief reports and highlights about their ministry work in the various institutions they attend. One of the main highlights of the PNG ATSA Convention is establishing a new construct aid post in which will serve the people living along the Oriomo River in the South Fly district. President for PNG ATSA Steward Alu Kalan said that the construction of the aid post is nearly complete with just outstanding work of plumbing, which the Middle-Fly District Development Authority has pledged to fund. Meanwhile, during the pre- convention last week, they were able to visit nine villages of Western province and conducting workshops and training, as well as spiritual programs. President Kalan mentioned that 25 candidates accepted the good news of God and made decisions to be baptized on Saturday during the baptism program.

Director for Community Development Agencies Yanny Guman has been working with communities in Simbu Province in addressing gender based issues faced by the people for sometime now. Most of the work of their Agency is creating and building peace among the citizens which they saw that a lot of issues were gender based violence. Mr. Guman said, over the years they have been really working hard to support community leadership in the Simbu Province and with the grant received from the government it will help to support their work for referral pathways by working together with Family Sexual Violence, Family support center and the Welfare. “With funding, we rely heavily on donor’s support and for a long time we have not received support from the government whether the national, provincial or district, but we do it because there’s a need to do it”. Community Development Agency is hoping to identify victims or survivors in the rural communities and activate a better process by strengthening the pathways for completely putting an end to the issues. Meanwhile, Wallis Asi Apaso from Eastern Highlands who resides in Port Moresby commends the Human Rights Activism campaign for a bold stand in addressing what the country is lacking on. Mr. Apaso has been living in the city for a long time and he’s been very observant in the way people behave in the city. “About 40 years ago, people have respect for Human Rights unlike today where respect is no more. Lately we have been experiencing a lot of deaths from manslaughter and our behaviors have changed, seeing a lot of chaos around our places”. He urged that Government must deliver awareness to communities and work together with agencies and churches to carry out the campaign aggressively in order to save the lives of people.

At the commemoration of International Human Rights day held today outside Sir Guise Stadium, 10 Civil Society Organizations received their grants from the Government. Secretary for Department of Community Development and Religion Jerry Ubasi announced a K7.9M funded by the Government to help each of the existing organization function and carry out more projects in helping to keep a safer PNG and bring every citizen together in peace. Mr. Ubasi extended his gratitude towards leaders in the frontline that are doing a great work to make sure funding is available. “I will not invent any new thing, CSO are already on ground and they are carrying out the work. I do not need to come up with a lot of programs. Our responsibility is to support such organizations”. A call of action card was presented to the NCD Authority pleading for certain issues or actions to be taken to better address them at the higher level of authority. The call of action card was received by City manager Ravu Frank and Secretary Jerry Ubasi. In the closing remarks of Governor Parkop delivered by Mr. Frank, he urged each of the CSO to properly use the funds by effectively doing projects in the communities.

The PNG Adventist Tertiary Student Association (ATSA) travelled in to Western Province this week in preparation for their 19th biennial convention to be held in Kiunga starting next week. Participants of the convention include students from the various universities and colleges in the country as well as their professionals and Pastors. PNG ATSA Secretary, Lovelyne Aragas, confirmed that 300 plus students are attending the convention and their main goal is to carry out awareness on financial literacy, provide medical check to the locals and also share the word of God. “As students are settling in this week, they will carry out pre-convention programs in the nine sites allocated for them.” Ms. Aragas added that Lake Murray village is one of the sites to visit and they have a special team of medical students from the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) Medical Faculty and Divine Word University (DWU) that will be running clinic to the people there. Though they faced challenges of logistics and transport, Ms. Aragas said they will be able to get the convention going with the support received from the church and professionals.

The Hospital in Gulf Province is facing issues with lack of management and governing body that looks after the hospital. This concern was raised in an interview with the Gulf Deputy Director Public Health Mr. Ben Bal. Mr Bal said that the hospital does not have a governing authority that can make decisions as there is no Acting CEO on ground to organise and properly coordinate the operation of Gulf hospital. “Many cases reported here at the hospital such as pneumonia, malaria and waterborne diseases cannot be treated at the hospital as there is a shortage of medical drugs and unavailability of necessary equipment.” Apart from this, a couple of cases brought to the hospital were suspected to be Covid related which have lead to a number of unfortunate deaths reported at the hospital. Mr Bal added that the situation has already been reported to the Health Minister, however nothing has been done up till now.