Ipatas’ drive on education receives praise

WABAG rural LLG president Roy Kipalan has praised Enga Governor Peter Ipatas for successfully driving the education policy that has seen thousands of Engans entering the workforce.
Kipalan was speaking to people who turned up to witness the Enga Students Foundation paying school fees for children in the province last Monday.
He said Enga was once branded  the “Wild West” with tribal fights, a malfunctioning government system which could not provide basic services.
He said that 15 years ago only a handful of students attended tertiary institutions while ordinary people had to travel to other provinces, mostly to Mt Hagen, to seek basic services.
“While such was the situation in the province, no one wanted to come here,” he said.
“We were unwanted; no one wanted to do any business with us in those days.”
Kipalan said those experiences had become a thing of the past when long-time ward councillor and president of the Wabag LLG Peter Ipatas was elevated to the top political post in the province in 1996.
He said apart from prioritising education by introducing free education, Ipatas had put a lot of money into building more schools.
“That is why we have a record 160,000 students attending educational institutions in the country,” he said.
“Our leader knew how he would turn the entire perception around,” he said.
Kipalan thanked Ipatas for funding, among others, the Enga Teachers College, inviting Institute of Business Studies to establish its campus in the province starting next year, allocating initial funding to build a technical college at Akom, in the Wabag district, and planning to build a state-of-the-art hospital that American consultants were working on.
“In my view, no other governor in the country has recorded a landmark achievement like our governor did, particularly working under extremely difficult conditions.
“I salute you for turning Enga from the ‘Wild West’ to ‘Well West’.
“You have begun an era of success for our province and our children will be in charge of this country with the best brains that we develop by putting a lot of money in education,” he said.