Youth group cleans Amelia Earhart Memorial Park in Lae

By JUNIOR UKAHA
A GROUP of youths have again cleaned up the Amelia Earhart Memorial Park in Lae which was overgrown in bushes.
However, this was done for free as the youths expect to be paid by the city authority.
The Lae Independent Park Youth Group from Ward Two cleaned up the park for the fourth time yesterday using their own resources.
Group leader Jeffrey Simon told The National that his group of 15 unemployed youths stopped cleaning the park in January after waiting in vain for their payment from the Lae City Council.
“We have been cleaning this park since 2014,” Simon said.
“No one told us to clean it.
“We have used our own initiative to clean and beautify the park because we think the Amelia Earhart Park has a historical significance to the country.
“The sad thing is that in all those years we have been cleaning the place, we have not been getting any assistance from the Lae City Council or Morobe government.”
Simon said last year they gave a major facelift to the park.
They painted Earhart’s memorial stone, a wartime machine gun and the flowerbed stones, and cemented their foundations.
“We gave an invoice to the Lae City Council for our work but to date we have received no payments,” Simon said.
“That was the reason why the boys gave up work up until today, we decided to clean the park again.”
Lae Mayor Koim Trilu Leahy said he was aware of the work the youths were doing but was not sure who had tasked them.
“Nonetheless, I urge these youths to come and sit down with me and we can iron this issue out,” Leahy said.
He said all contract work with the council should follow proper government processes and procedures.