Group in Malaysia for urbanisation tips

A  TOUR team from PNG departed for Malaysia yesterday to study how the country developed its towns and cities and maybe adopt their concepts and strategies for PNG’s urbanisation programme.
Lands and Physical Planning Minister Lucas Dekena, Housing Minister Andrew Kumbakor, Urbanisation chairman Max Kep and senior government officers will meet with officials of federal department for towns and cities planning in Malaysia.
In a briefing at the Office of Urbanisation, Kep said the purpose of the study trip was to learn and adopt the strategies Malaysia used to develop its towns and cities.
Kep said, currently, PNG had a population of around one million people living in urban areas and the figure was increasing.
He also highlighted the need to have proper plans for towns and cities’ development to cater for the growing population and also to remove deteriorating infrastructure which had already become an eye sore.
“Malaysia has become one of the first countries in the world to embark on an urbanisation programme that has resulted in their towns and cities become well-developed.
‘The study trip would be to examine the models and planning systems and how they were implemented and discuss with key players in Malaysia to learn whatever we can from them,” Kep said.
He said the team would learn from Malaysia’s experiences to use in the implementation of the PNG Urbanisation policy 2010-30 which was adopted in June.