Hela people urged to return home

By CLIFFORD FAIPARIK
Instead of wandering aimlessly, the people of Hela have been urged to return to the region in Southern Highlands and contribute their human resource to help develop it when it becomes a province in 2012, former Tari-Pori MP Sir Matiabe Yuwi said yesterday.
“Only those who are employed in formal employment and business can stay in those parts of the country that they have settled and have contributed positively to their adopted communities. Others who are creating nuisance, havoc and causing ill feelings to their fellow community members must return to Hela region.”
Sir Matiabe said that after the end of a successful two-days Hela Transition Authority (HTA) seminar in Port Moresby last Friday.
The seminar was to formulate a long term development plan for Hela.
He said that it would need an enormous effort of sweat and labour to fulfil the Hela province dream.
“It is not easy but hard work. But we can do it.”
Sir Matiabe said that Hela people’s labour had developed other parts of the country during the colonial days in the agricultural industry and provided this nation economical platform before the mining, oil and gas industries.
“We have worked in other people’s plantations and built their towns. Now it is time to build our own Hela province.”
Sir Matiabe also urged the Tari-Pori people to support their current MP and HTA chairman James Marape to ensure he returns after 2012 elections to oversee the development of the Hela province.
It is projected that by 2014, Hela will be established with its own provincial bureaucratic systems.