Parkop: I’m ready to openly debate issues

 "ERAGAIRMAYAL” is obviously a pro-betel nut spitting and pro-filth proponent (Letters, September 17). 

It is also obvious he thinks he is the smartest person on this earth while I am probably the dumbest person around. I admit I am no Albert Einstein but these are the facts.

• We are not charging any fees on the big buses operated by NCDC because our application to the National Land Transport Board for a licence to charge fees was refused. 
• I never campaigned for free water to the settlements. 

David Unagi, or whoever he knows, can get credit for that policy but a dumb person like me knows that it was not a sustainable policy.

That’s why it collapsed leaving a lot of debts for the community and NCDC to pay. 

We are now connecting  water to various communities such as Burns Peak, ATS Oro Village, Tatana Island, Pari Village, Taurama Valley with support of Eda Ranu and the community so that the community can pay a fee that is subsidised and not totally free. That’s more sustainable than the free water policy he boasts about.

• I don’t have powers to reduce the high cost of living, and the money NCDC has, is inadequate to provide subsidies for the poor or for all, especially food subsidies and other basic expenses. 

In most other countries, that’s an initiative national governments undertake. 

• Our policy for the poor and low income earners is not to set up a welfare scheme in which taxpayers subsidise them forever. 

My policy is for empowerment.

This was stated very clearly in my platforms in all my election campaigns and I have been working on their delivery since taking office.

We have provided micro-finance and other financial assistance  to the poor, low income and vunerable sectors of our community; we have provided technical and vocational scholarships to young men and women from this and other sectors of our city; we have assisted more than 8,000 young men and women to find fulltime and part time jobs; we have funded short-term skills training programmes for over 20,000 young men and women and others not so young. 

We are now providing skills training and job placement training through the K50million loan secured from World Bank for the next five years. We have also lauched a micro-business project in partnership with SVS at an initial cost of K1million targeted at specific sectors of our City. The list goes on. 

I might be the dumbest person on earth, but this dumb person knows that welfare is not sustainable and does not work.

• If Eragairmayal is so hung up about the proposal to ban betel nut sales and chewing in the city, I am ready to debate him and whoever holds similar views in some public domain. 

He can choose the time and place as long as its a controlled setting which will allow rational debate. I suspect, however, that he will not accept this challenge and continue to hide behind an alias so he can continue to spew lies and falsehoods in the hope that people will accept what he says as the truth.

I do not wish to engage in a defence of my policy and achievements. Let history be the judge, but I am very clear about the goals and outcomes that I have set about to achieve and the strategies that will enable achievement. I am on course to do this. 

Mine might be the dumbest policies and strategies but this dumb person is ready to defend them against the writer’s “superior alternatives and strategies”. 

Governor Powes Parkop 

Port Moresby