Hela still struggling: Bando

 By MALUM NALU
HELA, still reeling from the death of Governor Anderson Agiru, is struggling to get back on its feet, says provincial administrator William Bando.
“We are slowly finding our feet again,” he told The National yesterday.
“The death of our leader has sent a lot of shockwaves around the province.“We’ve been switched off in our focus and work.“We are still in mourning.“The customary process of the haus krai is not completed yet until we remove the canvases and houses.
“We are still visiting the mourning area in the governor’s village with food and fuel until we have completed these customary obligations.”Bando said Agiru was a “pillar” for Hela who would always be remembered as the first governor of the province.
He said after the mourning he would do a complete clean-up of the provincial administration.
Bando said Hela was caught in a difficult situation of having no accommodation for public servants as well as no proper office space.
“Construction work on the new offices – Hela 1, Hela 2 and Hela 3 – have come to a stop because of no funding,” he said.
“It is our wish and our view that we need to finish these.”
Bando said they would also finish some other projects that the governor had started.“The court has decided on the political saga between our late governor and Francis Potape.
“I will leave it to the politicians to decide the next course of action to take.“My appeal to public servants is to remain neutral and remain calm to allow the (provincial) assembly to elect the new governor to lead our province and until the issue of writs for 2017 elections.”
“Public servants must remain calm and must refrain from getting involved in politics or even playing politics using office resources.”
Bando said the biggest challenge to Hela was tribal fighting all over the province.“I want to warn the warriors and people out there killing each other that we are not interested in your fights as a government,” he said.“We are interested in the protection of public safety and State properties.“It’s come to a stage where we can’t continue to waste public resources on issues that are costly to the province, our people and State properties.
“Fighting has now become an industry of its own.”
Bando said the ring leaders enrich themselves with pigs and money from the contributions for compensation.