MP Mirisim puts education and road as priorities

Momase, Normal
Source:

The National, Thursday 2nd May 2013

 A VISION by Peter Iwei, the former member for Telefomin in West Sepik to establish an airline company, Min Aviation, will not be further explored by the incumbent Solan Mirisim.

“I see this project as a failed one,”  Mirisim said yesterday at the University of Papua New Guinea.

He was there to present a K95,000 tertiary school fee subsidy cheque for his 48 Telefomin district students.  

He added that if his administration bought a plane, maintenance charges would be excessive.

Mirisim has another vision.

“I will deliver the road,” he said.

He affirmed that in his five-year term he would link the rugged mountainous Telefomin and Oksapmin areas by road, and joining the economically vibrant and accessible Tabubil-Kiunga linkage.

“Our service centre is Kiunga and Tabubil,” he said.

He said Vanimo was too far from Telefomin.

Mirisim said a tender for feasibility study on the road should be published in September this year and full funding for the Tabubil, Telefomin, Oksapmin road project should commence by 2014.

Mirisim and his joint district planning and budget priority committee is placing education as their key driver for development.

“I am giving education number one priority,” he said.

He said without human capital, there would be no development.

He said his tertiary fee subsidies would be funded through annual grants during his term in office.

Other universities like the University of Goroka, Unitech, and Divine Word University would also be paid tertiary subsidy fees.

Mirisim, in his nine months in office, has opened up rural banking in Telefomin, funded television and radio signals and he said his ambition was to change the far-flung area into an attractive, accessible and affordable service delivery area.

He said the Telefomin High School should receive a secondary school status by 2015.

“I am actually securing funding for it and it would be through the tax credit scheme funded by Ok Tedi,” he said.

Mirisim has also invited Western Power do feasibility study and consider another potential site to install a hydro power station.

The mini-hydro in Telefomin now, is sometimes inefficient when there is low rainfall.

Mirisim said he would also consider a hydro power station for Oksapmin.

These projects would be funded under the rural electrification programme.