District funding shortfall raised

By HELEN TARAWA
FUNDING from district services improvement programmes (DSIP) and services grants are not enough to develop districts, Usino-Bundi MP Jimmy Uguro says.
Uguro, while presenting the district’s five-year development plan to National Planning on Friday, said his district had a lot of projects that would help change the country.
“We need assistance from agencies of government. The mining development activities, Ramu Agro Industries, Ramu Block One memorandum of agreement (MOA) programmes, all those government commitments are captured in the plan,” he said.
“We invite the donor agencies and the development partners to also be part of this five-year development plan to assist the least developed districts like Usino-Bundi.
“We have captured in our plans different funding sources including DSIP, DSG and donor funding to assist and also the MOA agreements for the plans for impact projects like Ramu nickle mine and Ramu Block One which is a forest activity, Maringo Mine and Ramu Agro Industry.”
Uguro said these were the existing programmes that they had signed agreements for different sectors of funding.
“We rely on all these apart from DSG and DSIP fundings which are not forthcoming as expected,” he said. “We need to align those development partners and state agencies to also assist by meeting the commitments.
“Agencies like the Department of Planning and Mineral Resources Authority assisted us in our development agendas and we expect them to also chip in.
“Now that we have the plan, they have no reason to reject our requests to fund. We have met the requirements by putting up all these to national plan so they should be part of this plan to deliver services to the people.
“There are challenges ahead of us but we rely on everybody to assist us, especially the Ramu nickle mine which will boost Papua New Guinea’s economy.
“We acknowledge the state for giving our landowners royalties last Friday.”