Landowner raises concern over regional development

UNDER the concept of regional development, Arawa town will have to be developed and given a facelift as the business hub for Kieta, considering the fact that according to the town plan, it is a central business district, an industrial area and regional headquarters for Central Bougainville, a landowner says.
Ward 1 women’s representative in the Arawa urban community government and a landowner of Arawa town, Anita Salas, told The National that in order to give the town a fair facelift, the ABG needed to put a little bit more than the current funding for the town.
“Apparently, the ABG developed its own negative perspective about Arawa and had neglected it for nine solid years from 2010-19,” she said.
“The only thing it used to factor in the annual budget was the recurrent grant.
“The recurrent grant or town service grant was used to pay all employees from the manager right down to the last person on the structure.
“As I speak, the employees from the manager have not been paid for 13 fortnights, carried over from 2019.”
Salas said although numerous attempts were made to have four senior management officers placed on an ABG salary structure, for some reason this never happened.
“Since 2010 until now, Arawa urban community government has faced a lot of challenges due to no funding vegetation control and littering not managed,” she said.
“There is no funding to maintain the rubbish trucks to collect rubbish from residents.”
Salas said law and order was also one of the issues that needed to be addressed.