Kokopo has a sister city

By ABIGAIL APINA
EAST New Britain has finally achieved another milestone with the signing of a memorandum of agreement (MoA) on Tuesday for the establishment of sister-city relations with the district council of Mount Barker, in Australia.
Provincial administrator Aquila Tubal said he was pleased the project “is now ready for implementation”.
He said implementation was their greatest challenge.
He said a shortage of skills in growth centre was evident and such partnership projects were vital for ideas, information, skills and expertise to be shared to help service delivery.
The MoA was signed between the Kokopo Vunamami urban level government, district council of Mount Barker, East New Britain provincial government and the Commonwealth Local Government Forum Pacific Project (CLGF).
Mount Barker is a growing district council similar to the current booming Kokopo town leading to this partnership being realised and established to provide expertise and assistance in management, CLGF spokesman Ted Lulu said.
CLGF will be facilitating this project as it focuses on strengthening local governments in terms of capacity building.
Tubal said although the partnership only involved Kokopo-Vunamami Urban LG, he anticipated strengthening the relationship to pave way for other LLGs and growth centres to learn from the sister-city relationship and develop their centres further.
Kokopo, East New Britain, is one of three towns in Papua New Guinea to recently engage in this partnership arrangement.
The other two towns are Madang and Goroka.
The project will be supported by the Australia  government through AusAID  with funding up to A$100,000 annually to CLGF.
CLGF would implement the first three years of the project in collaboration with project partners.