East Sepik Governor, Allan Bird has once again brought the floor of parliament back to its senses after delivering what might just be the most truthful remarks regarding a real time strategy to alleviating issues concerning Job creation and curbing the employment issues of the country. “I think it’s a big issue, we’ve spoken about it at length. But again, I regret to say we still have no firm strategy. Our population sits at around maybe 12 million, maybe 14 million. There are predictions that maybe in another 10 years the population will be around 20 million.” The Governor raised his concerns during the grievance debate in parliament. He said the debate on how many jobs that will be created will soon be more pronounced over the next 5-10 years. He said the government needs to come up with a strategy to work this out. “Now if that strategy involves diversifying the economy from the extractive sector, then we need to see that strategy. We need a team of people that are sitting down right now, constructing that particular strategy. “We need to have people vetting that strategy.” He went on to state that so far, in parliament despite many debates and discussions nothing much has happened in terms of formulating a plan to address this. Bird believes that this discussion should be one for the Ministerial Economic Committee as it cuts across a number of ministries. Governor bird mentioned that shifting blame onto previous governments will not help to resolve the issue and does not solve the problem. “Our young will remain unemployed and the long term unemployed are still unemployed. Until the jobs are actually created, the problem still remains. And we sit in this house and throw mud at each other, that doesn’t help.” “One government needs to take ownership of this particular problem.” The projected unemployment rate in Papua New Guinea remains unchanged at 2.80 percent in 2022 from 2.80 percent in 2021 and is expected to reach 2.50 percent by the end of 2023, according to Trading Economics global macro models and analyst’s expectations.