Esso active in supporting communities

ByANCILLA WRAKUALE
PNG LNG project developer Esso Highlands hs been supporting local communities of the petroleum project through various development activities for the past year apart from its construction work.
Social impacts coordinator of Esso Highlands Sisa Kini provided updates and current projects by her company when she spoke on social programmes and development at the mining and petroleum seminar in Port Moresby last Thursday.
She said the company had developed community development support strategy and plans in assisting communities improve their livelihoods.
Kini explained that they had three components under the scheme.
The first component looked at enabling the community to better respond to potential projects and capitalise on project opportunities to improve quality of life.
The second component was based on increasing income-earning opportunities and self-reliant livelihoods which was being done through the development of the local economy.
The third component was aimed at building each community’s capacity to identify and meet their development needs in a sustainable way through community capacity building and partnerships.
Kini said they also distributed school learning materials to elementary and primary schools in the project impacted
areas.
She said under the local economic deve­lopment programme, they helped villagers at Portion 152 in Central province to engage in cashew out-grower programme.
Kini said 16,000 trees had been delivered to date with 640 registered female growers and 540 male growers.
She said the programmes would help the people from the project impacted areas to be sustainable after the construction phase of the LNG Project.
Kini said they had also established a rural women’s business group from eight Kikori area villages.
The women will be involved in producing and selling  vegetables to the project camps and other Kikori Delta institutions.
Kini said Esso Highlands was also involved in providing community capacity training such as personal viability training for locals.
She said they had received positive feedback from the participants who said they were now looking at implementing their own business plans they learned from the training.