K27million more for public housing

THE National Government is committed to providing housing for Papua New Guineans.
Treasurer Patrick Pruaitch announced yesterday that K27 million was allocated for public housing for next year.
In this year’s Supplementary Budget, the Government allocated K10 million to support institutional housing, K15 million for housing development and K15 million for an urbanisation programme.
In next year’s budget, the Government has allocated a further K27 million for housing development, building on the substantial commitment that the Government had made to housing.
Mr Pruaitch also announced a K28 million allocation in the 2008 Budget to finance land reforms.
Budget documents revealed that poor management of land had been a major impediment to economic growth.
The land reforms began with a Land Summit in 2005 and following that, the Government introduced the National Land Development Programme focusing on land administration, land dispute resolution mechanisms and freeing up customary land for development purposes.
Some progress had been made with the land development task force recommending the establishment of a single court to deal with all land related matters and a Land Development Programme Implementation Unit to plan and manage implementation.
The NEC had recently endorsed the establishment of a single land court and work on it would continue next year.
The committee is now outsourcing the work of the programme and a private firm was engaged in July 2007 to provide costing and other related work for the unit.
The Government is committed to the land development programme and work would continue into next year and beyond.