Dua: Chimbu to focus on education, infrastruture

The National National

By LUKE KAMA
CHIMBU Governor Michael Dua says the provincial government focus this year will be on education and improving and strengthening infrastructures.
The Governor, accompanied by provincial administrator Joe Kunda, presented a budget of more than K218 million to Treasurer and Deputy Prime Minister Charles Abel in Port Moresby on Monday.
The budget of K218,103,125 includes:

  • Recurrent estimates of K117,526,242;
  • 2018 development allocation of K73,170,000;
  • Internal Revenue projection of K8,649,500;
  • 2017 rollover funds of K480,854; and
  • Unissued 2017 warrants amounting to K18,276,529.

“Our 2018 motto is “Time Blo Senis” (Time for Change) and we are structuring our 2018 budget based on this vision,” Dua said.
“We are changing the routine way of conducting business at the provincial level by allocating more resources and manpower down to the districts to do the work and at the provincial level, we will only coordinate, do monitoring and ensure there is compliance in spending the resources to where they are supposed to be spent to benefit the people at large,” Dua said.
He said education would continue to remain a key priority for his government and they would be looking at building and improving education infrastructures and providing school fee assistance to students studying at tertiary institutions.
“Apart from this, we are also looking at investing in one or two economic projects, especially in the agriculture sector, and to improve our provincial economy because our internal revenue right now is very small.
“It’s less than K10 million a year.”