Prime Minister James Marape, MP, officially launched the Hiri Koiari Five Year Development District Plan yesterday at the APEC Haus, in Port Moresby.
The Prime Minister said the Marape-Rosso Government wants to bring leadership closer to the people at the District Level that is why his Government approved seven new districts from the twelve recommended by the Electoral Boundaries Commission for the 2022 Elections and Hiri-Koiari was one of the seven.
Prime Minister Marape said the seven electorates were not just picked for the sake of picking.
They were strategic economic electorates and they were big so we needed to split them to ensure that leaders were closer to the people.
He said there was Hiri-Koiari, the electorate that supplies water and power into Port Moresby and hosts the PNG LNG Plant site.
We also spilt Middle Fly, North Fly and Central Fly electorate that hosts P’nyang and OK Tedi Gold Project.
The split of Komo-Margarima that hosts the upstream of PDL 1.
We have the split of Laigap-Porgera that hosts the Porgera Gold Project. We split Wau-Bulolo that hosts the Hidden Valley Gold project and coming up is the Wafi-Golpu project as well as forestry and agricultural projects and we split Talasea, that hosts one of the big Oil Palm project in the country that also has subsidiary in Ijivitari, Oro Province.
The Prime Minister went on to commend the Member for Hiri-Koiari Hon. Keith Iduhu for stepping up in his role as the leader of the people of Hiri- Koiari and becoming the first District to hand in their five year development plan and to get the ball rolling on the plan, the government has remitted K5 million to the District Treasury at the time of the launching of the plan.
“Let me say thank you to the Hon. Keith Iduhu for your foresight and your aggressive focus in ensuring that the new electorate that myself and the leaders of the last parliament were able to construct for our people of Hiri and Koiari,” Prime Minister Marape said.
“As the Prime Minister who delivered the new electorate, I was very interested to see the leader who would emerge for the new electorate during the 2022 National General Elections and the Hon. Keith Iduhu emerged and is showing the qualities of a strong and assertive leader.”
The Prime Minister said the new electorates emerged against a back drop of criticism that it is not feasible nor is it sustainable but the critics forget that our population is increasing and the National Government needs leaders to be closer to the people to better understand the needs of the people in the electorate for funding support.
He said the electorate Kairiku-Hiri at that time was quite big therefore we needed to have a split to better serve the people.
Prime Minister Marape said the 11th National Parliament and beyond is the time for leadership in the districts to shape the future of our people and there will be a greater drawn down of power for the National Government to the lower levels of government.
He said the Government has already started putting more money into the districts for 2012 and with the increase of the budget from K18.7 billion in 2020 to K19.6 billion in 2021 than K22.2 billion in 2022 and now a record K24.56 billion in 2023, more funding will be drawn down to the district to ensure the economic space is opened up and not focused on urban centres only.
The Prime Minister also called on all other districts in the country to draw up their development plans, including scope of works (especially number of kilometres of road) and costings for the road works they want done in their electorates or the number of aid-post they want built so appropriate funding that be given for then projects.
He emphasised that we do not want to leave anyone behind. No Local Level Government District or province, including their people must be left behind. We must all pickup together and move forward together into the future.