Sister-city plan works wonders
By NELSON K PHILIP
THE Alotau Urban local level government is now benefiting from Sunshine Coast regional council as a result of a sister-city partnership programme established under the Commonwealth Local Government Good Practice Scheme (CLGGPS).
A senior operational health officer with the Sunshine Coast regional council Doug Barnes said Alotau was the ideal choice to foster a partnership programme with Noosa city.
AULLG chose waste management as the area in which they require assistance so a scoping visit was conducted late 2006 by the mayor and CEO Noosa Council to establish the relationship.
“Through this partnership we embarked on training of waste management staff, provision of reliable waste collection services and litter facilities, provision of litter education to the community, provision of lidded wheelie-bins for premises, revenue generation and recovery, register of refuse bins and locations, improving the existing billing process, provision of technology to manage the billing and recycling-reuse programme,” said Barnes.
Mr Barnes said that AULLG has benefited from the partnership and they were committed to maintain this programme.
“The partnership has gone well so far and the potential exists to achieve excellent outcomes in Alotau over the next four years,” said Mr Barnes.
“We realised that there are some similarities between Alotau and the Sunshine Coast. Alotau is emerging as a tourist destination and has significant potential for further development,” he said.
Alotau town manager Sanori Ellot said so far they had received several wheelie-bins and a couple of computers with soft wares installed for waste management and billing system.

Commonwealth local govt office established
THE Commonwealth Local Government Forum (CLGF) now has an office in Port Moresby.
The office was officially launched by National Capital District Governor Powes Parkop last month.
CLGF chairperson Basil Morrison said the purpose of the Port Moresby office is to strengthen regional networks and cooperation between local government practitioners, enhance training and capacity building opportunities for local governments, strengthen institutional programmes and activities that demonstrate fundamental values such as human rights approach and mainstreaming of the tenets of good urban governance and facilitate regional exchange of policies, good practice and technical cooperation.
Mr Parkop during the event said it was pleasing to note that CLGF is working with like minded LLG’s fostering mutual partnerships between sister towns and cities.
He said the event symbolises the growth of the country’s Local Level Governments (LLG) in partnership with other LLGs in the commonwealth.
Mr Parkop said LLG was the driving force to achieving millennium goal outcomes and CLGF was promoting and advocating these values.
With the establishment of the CLGF office in Port Moresby, the work of NCDC will be enhanced tremendously especially in dealing with the increasing challenges of urban management.
“My ambition is to lead the way to change PNG through Port Moresby as a model city and show the potential of our country to lead,” said Mr Parkop.
He said that he would like to see Port Moresby change for the better, to reduce violence, crime and other social problems .

Goilala summit attracts administrator’s support
THE Central provincial administrator has given his support to implement the resolutions of the first-ever Goilala development summit held last week in Woitape LLG of Central province.
Administrator Raphael Yibmaramba said despite the three-day summit being planned and organised outside his administration, his administration will strive to support and implement the resolutions of this summit.
“All provincial governments are obliged to set development priorities consistent with general framework of the medium-term development strategy,” he said.
He said he understands that the focus of this summit is to canvas development options which will be captured in the Goilala district development plan.

Telikom honours promise
TELIKOM PNG honoured its commitment by presenting K10,000 promised to the Young Women’s Christian Association of Port Moresby last week.
YWCA president Okera Amini said the money would go along way to fund some of its community-based rehabilitation programmes and the renovations of its run-down buildings.
“YWCA mainly survives on a voluntary basis where members take on the responsibility in fundraisings to fund its existing programmes,” she said.

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