No answers to increase in settlements in POM

THERE is no doubt half of the population of NCD live in settlements and coastal villages.
The settlement people and Motuan villagers in NCD run the economy of Port Moresby city.
They are drivers, office workers, nurses, teachers, policemen, cleaners, shop keepers, taxi and PMV bus operators, street cleaners, tea boy, newspaper venders, informal sector entrepreneurs, construction workers, fresh food traders, you name it.
They literally make Port Moresby spin on its axis.
Without them the capital city would grind to a complete halt and would cease to exist as a functional metropolis.
Unfortunately, these ordinary people are the most marginalised and disenfranchised citizens of the country.
They live in deplorable conditions in settlements all over the city.
They have no proper water supply, electricity and sewerage system.
Their settlement and villages roads are riddled with crater-like potholes.
They live torturously without these modern necessities and even build their homes and squat on state land for generations.
It really pains me to see our ordinary citizens suffering under what I consider to be state sponsored miseries.
I question why the municipal authority and Governor Powes Parkop have played deaf and dumb to the plight of the settlers for 10 long years that he has been in office.
These are the people who voted and gave him the mandate to occupy his impressive new City Hall.
Can Parkop be responsive to their needs now?
NCD is not a regular province like Morobe where the provincial government struggles to deliver services to every hamlet of the vast province with limited resources.
NCD is geographically the smallest province in the country but the richest of all.
Governor Parkop delivers annual budgets worth hundreds of millions of kina.
And yet his voters are suffering and dying in the settlements for want of a better life.
It doesn’t cost a fortune to pipe water and pull electricity into settlements or build a clinic or school or police post. With the kind of annual budget at his disposal he can literally transform settlements into satellite towns overnight as he arrogantly preaches.
I am now challenging Governor Parkop to a public debate on the current status and the future of settlements in NCD at a neutral venue, preferably at the University of Papua New Guinea.
I wish to debate him on issues affecting settlements such as service delivery, land titles for block holders, law and order, the infamous 8-Mile urbanisation project and many others.
The people have had enough of Parkop empty promises. It’s time to face the truth.

Bonny Igime
NCD