Danaya: Funds for people affected

 By ELIZABETH MIAE

WESTERN Governor Dr Bob Danaya has issued a stern warning to the cholera response committee in his province to use the funds on cholera patients and not for administrative use.

He said this yesterday when revealing to the media that his government had sacked four senior members of the committee, including the deputy provincial administrator, for not furnishing the report on how the K1 million allocated in response to the outbreak was spent between October and this month.

Danaya said the sacking came when the controller of the committee informed the provincial executive council meeting, a fortnight ago, that the report was not ready despite requests made earlier. 

He told the sacked members during the meeting they were not performing and would be replaced, warning them not to play around with people’s lives.

When asked what his long term solution was to improve water and sanitation on the main island, the governor said an agreement was signed in 2005 between his government and the PNG Sustainable Development Program (PNGSDP) to have a permanent sewerage system and do away with the black bucket system it currently had.

Five years on and that project had yet to get off the ground, which the governor indicated was the delay by PNGSDP.

He said: “They (PNGSDP) cannot make the people of Western wait any longer as people are dying from cholera.”

Danaya also called on the Ok Tedi Mining Ltd to provide fresh drinking water for villages in Kiunga all the way down to the mouth of the Fly River.

“By improving water supply, it would help prevent further epidemics from occurring. 

Daru township’s current water supply is inadequate for the 20,000 plus people,” he said.