Following in the footsteps of Lenke

ENGA has been commended for its unfaltering support for the education for its youth.
Already, the results are bearing fruit throughout the country, Education Minister James Marape told a gathering in Wabag on Monday.
“Engans dominate most educational institutions today,” the minister said. “And, now, Engans are entering and are dominating the work force.
“That is the end result of a leadership which focuses on education.”
The Enga government has offered free education since 1997 when Governor Peter Ipatas first entered parliament.
The only other province which had followed the same policy, and reaped the same benefits, is Morobe whose three-term governor Luther Wenge also entered parliament and applied the policy in 1997.
Marape freely admits that the policy had worked and that students and workers from the two provinces are now poised to dominate.
Along the way, however, certain glitches have entered the free education policy and both governors will be the first to admit to it.
The free education policy made the parents lazy. It further enhanced the dependence mentality that was already well entrenched in the psyche of the population.
Students took a no-care attitude and began to see the policy as something that was owed to them. They became unappreciative to the extent that both governments have now restricted the policy to only some areas and placed stringent conditions.
A focus on education, however, would appear to be the right approach and with the glitches mended, it should be the way ahead.
Here enters the education policy of the Wabag district, an electorate in Enga.
The brainchild of its present member and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Trade and Immigration Sam Abal, the district’s education policy has given rise to what we have reported today as the Lenke model.
The district’s school infrastructure funding policy focuses primarily on self-reliance. Abal states: “By working together as a community, the administration supplies the material and supervision while the local community supplies the labour at no cost.
“Thus, the community takes ownership of the schools and the way in which the school is cared for is a reflection of the community. It also means we, as a community, can make the kina go a lot further and develop more facilities for the school.”
A copy of the district’s education policy was offered by the education minister when he was in Wabag on Monday to open the Lenke Community School classroom which was built entirely on the efforts and resources of the community.
Such a policy is, of course, not entirely a new concept but the important thing is that it has been made to work in the district.
At least three different schools have been offered seed capital from the district under the district services improvement programme but the schools have used the money to develop infrastructure that are at least three or four times the monetary worth of the assistance.
That is what happened when the minister approved K80,000 for the Lenke Community School, which is at the final approach to Wabag town.
The community was able to construct a double-storey four-classroom building that the education minister had described as the “best elementary classroom in PNG”. Its worth is four times the assistance from the district treasury.
Politicians, now that they are in charge of millions of kina for the first time in the life of this country, cannot go off and park money in shelf companies or with friends, family members and cronies like many have been doing.
They cannot go off on a spending spree or give to all and sundry. It is important to take stock of everything, to calculate and ensure that every toea that goes out to the people assists the people.
That appears to be what Abal’s education policy is doing and it is a good model, good enough indeed for his brother education minister to take it up as a model for infrastructure funding policy throughout PNG.
If that were to happen we can envisage, as does Abal, that “in the years to come, teachers will be well housed, children will be taught in good classrooms, schools will be well resourced” and, in the final analysis, there will be universal primary education.
It does not need big money projects such as the LNG project to ignite nationwide excitement and a frenzy of building and maintenance.
All every community has to do is follow the Lenke model.