Granville makes a breakthrough

By PISAI GUMAR
JOHN Granville, the owner and director of 14-Mile Funeral Home in Lae has a book full of testimonies in reaching the unfortunate and sharing out of his kindness materials needed by rural aid posts and assistance to the elderly and those living with disabilities.
For the last 23 years Granville has been silently reaching out and sharing out of love in distributing beddings, wheelchairs, crutches, bundles for infants among many other items.
The accident and emergency unit at Angau Memorial Hospital is also a major beneficiary of Granville’s kindness over the years.
“Not only do I donate materials and equipment to health facilities, I also provide to the handicapped and old people and even build churches for communities and pastors’ houses. This is my gift endowed in me by God and I do it out of love for humanity,” Granville tells me.
“In my heart and mind, there is a thought that always keeps niggling me: How could I have all these material wealth while our rural people are still struggling? Hence, I decided to reach out to those unfortunate people and communities.”
Granville works in partnership with Del Cole from the organisation called Someone Who Cares in Brisbane, Australia.
Soon after the distribution and donatio of stocks are completed, Granville travels to Brisbane again and meets Cole to pack new stocks into containers for shipment.
Granville has been reaching far and wide to many remote areas in Menyamya and Markham in Morobe as well as in Eastern Highlands, to share the riches with them in last 23 years of his mission.
He was recently donating health equipment and building materials for churches and pastors’ houses.
Granville foots the costs for the containers including materials used for building permanent churches and pastors’ houses.
He also assists people in Manam and Karkar Islands in Madang to freight containers shipped to them.
“I feel blessed and honored for what I do for free out of the love for humanity to ensure a loving and caring society to live in harmony,” Granville said.
Elsewhere, he was also building mini hydro power plants using small creeks and streams to light up communities to improve children’s learning in schools.
So far, Granville has built 47 mini hydro power units using small creeks mostly in the Highlands and Mamose regions to enable remote communities lacking access to main power grids.
From his many years of experience in the construction of hydro power, Granville came to realise the need for electricity in areas where there is no running stream or creek to generate electricity.
Granville designed a mini hydro system that could source rain water stored in a 9000-litre tank to propel turbines to generate electricity.
To demonstrate his design, Granville will soon switch on the light from his latest breakthrough at his backyard at 14-Mile. He constructed the system to use rain water and a mini turbine.
Granville set up the base of the 9000-litre tank upon a small hill at his backyard and installed a down pipe connected to mini turbine through which water will surge down to propel the turbine to produce electricity.
The water source is the rain water stored in a number of tanks that will continuously supply the main tank all year round producing electricity.
It is surely a breakthrough for Granville’s 48th project he piloted to generate affordable three-phase power for household and business purposes.
Granville said it cost him over K6,000 in electricity bills per month and that forced him to think innovatively and construct something he can afford in a lifetime.
“I have built 47 hydro electricity units using creeks and streams in various rural communities and they are supplying power to hauslains.
“From then, I decided to design something a bit unlike those at the backyard using rainwater replacing diesel generators and the normal electricity source.”
Granville told The National that with the currently constructed mini power plant at 14-Mile, soon to be switched on, it is going to be a breakthrough in his creative thinking using rain water for generating electricity.
“I am going to build three or four similar hydro power stations using water tanks so when I switch off the other for cleaning and repair, I still have three others onstandby to provide ample electricity.”
After realising the fruition of his skills of trade, Granville registered as his business under the name Unique Construction and Engineering with the Investment Promotion Authority (IPA) to pursue his ambitions.
As per government regulations, Granville has engaged electrical specialists to test all procedures and applications used in the construction phase before switching on the lights.
“I will also get the patent (copyright) for my latest breakthrough.
“After constructing 48 mini-hydro power supplies and based on that experience, I am more than qualified now to reach out further into very remote communities to build more mini-hydro power supplies to give rural people some hope in their livelihoods.”
Granville is determined to work in partnership with district development authorities, provincial governments, donor agencies and non-government organisations that want to light up remote communities using appropriate technology and resources avaiable locally.