‘Autonomy progressing’

THE people of Bougainville must be genuine in supporting and making programmes on autonomy work, senior programme officer with the Division of Autonomy Implementation and Monitoring, Kotrifa Naropa says.
Naropa said this during a presentation to an awareness team of Bougainville students from the University of Papua New Guinea yesterday.
“The people of Bougainville can realise greater freedom and liberation through the successful draw down of powers and functions from the national government to the ABG,” he said.
Naropa said this could be done by:
l    The establishment of sustainable peace to create the ideal environment where powers and functions drawn down from the national government could be used for development process;
l    Supporting weapons disposal to create an environment for good democratic governance;
l    Promote education to generate human resource for Bougainville’s future; and
l    Promote a healthy work force.
He said the implementation of the six MoUs for the draw-down of powers and functions approved in the joint supervisory board meeting in February were progressing well based on the available resource capacity and capabilities the ABG had.
They were for education, teaching service commission, health, lands and physical planning, forestry and department of primary industry.
Naropa said there was good progress in the drawing down of powers and functions of the National Fisheries Authority to Bougainville Fisheries Authority, National Works to ABG Technical Services and National Public Service to
Bougainville Public Service.