The Mineral Resources Development Company (MRDC) Limited has spent over K17million to landowners of four PNG LNG impacted villages in the Central Province alone in four years for their community projects.
Mr. Augustin Mano, the Managing Director of MRDC said this during his key note speech at the opening of a massive community center yesterday at the Boera village built with these funds from the Community Infrastructure Trust Fund (CITF) held by MRDC.
Mr. Mano was happy with the way the landowners have used the funds from their royalties from the gas project to build more infrastructure to support the communities like this new Boera Community Centre.
“Most of these projects we don’t get external contractors to come, it’s the directors and the communities and we provide employment to everybody to build, so I want to thank all of the directors who have put in their time and effort.”
“It’s unique, most of the projects that MRDC manages, you don’t usually have directors living on project sites and doing the project in big part of the community, but for plant site it is the most unique so you can see the changes,” Mr Mano said.
Meanwhile, Mr. Mano further stated that close to K5million was spent on Boera alone for the community infrastructure projects in the last four years. The new community centre is the latest of the funds put to good use by the landowners themselves.
The new community centre at Boera village was built at a cost of K2.8million.