Finance and treasury goes to Hela people

MORE than 365,000 people of Hela in Southern Highlands will no longer travel to Mendi or Vulupindi Haus in Waigani to claim their royalty and equity payments.
Senior officials from the Department of Finance this week opened a number of district treasury offices in the region under its roll-out programme.
The team from finance was led by Finance Minister Peter O’Neill and department secretary Gabriel Yer.
The opening started on Monday in Mendi and Nipa followed by Koroba and Margarima on Tuesday and Komo and Tari on Wednesday.
O’Neill told a large crowd in Koroba on Tuesday that the district treasury roll-out programme was initiated in 2000 and would continue next year and in 2012.
He said postal and banking services would be introduced to support the programme, an initaitive of the National Alliance-led government.
O’Neill said this was just the beginning of more good things to come under the district support improvement programme (DSIP) where every member of parliament had been allocated K17 million each.
He told the people to take ownership over the services provided and look after the facilities.
Governor Anderson Agiru said the opening of the treasury offices was the result of a good working relationship between the provincial government and the Department of Finance and Treasury.
He said that under this programme, the provincial government injected K3.5 million as counterpart funding to build more police houses in the districts.