Jenny says congrats with a cake

By ERIC PIET
WHEN her bosses recently got confirmed to their positions, words of congratulations did not seem enough for Jenny Kiap who serves under them.
The ambuge from Western Highlands went a deed further – treating them to a special cake!
And what better time to present the surprise cake in front of her fellow managers to the Department for Community Development and Religion Secretary Jerry Ubase and his two deputies in Warren Marape and Jack Simbou than at the Dec 23 senior management year-end meeting convened at the Gateway Hotel in Port Moresby.
It as Kiap’s Christmas gift to merry their hearts.
After months of acting as secretary since Feb 2, 2021, Ubase penned his four-year permanency contract at the Government House in November, and a month later in December confirmed Marape and Simbou to deputy positions in charge of the programme division and corporate and regulatory services division, respectively.
As Disability Section manager, Jenny Kiap had all the reasons to be jubilant because the confirmation of the top three managers had instilled a sense of confidence and stability in the department’s leadership, that had in the beginning of the year entered muddied waters when Jerry Ubase’s acting appointment was met with dissent by an internal opposing faction.
In her congratulatory note to the trio on the cake, Kiap inscribed: “Congratulations to Jerry Ubase as the head of the Department for Community Development and Religion (DfCDR) and your two deputies Warren Marape and Mr Jack Simbou for your confirmations. May God bless and guide your leadership, and we anticipate a fruitful new year, 2022.”
She ended her inscription with a ‘season’s greetings’ to them. And yes, Ubase, Marape and Simbou will be in full swing, come 2022, in guiding ‘mv DfCDR’.
They have a huge undertaking for the families of this land in terms of protection and empowerment – and thanks to the Government for the allocation of a sizable appropriation in the 2022 budget; it is these funds that programme managers like Jenny Kiap will get to deploy in order to tick off their Key Result Areas (KRAs) in the new year.
And ambuge is grateful for that, she at least hopes to rest her personal coffers from which she, at times, dipped into to fund some of her sectional programmes in the absence of budgeted programme funds.
But Kiap is good with it, as far as work progress is concerned, she harbours no room for grumbling – she is always cool to flow, as cool as the ‘Tambul Ice’ in her beautiful snowy Western Highlands.

• Eric Piet is a freelance writer