People have right to better themselves: Tabar

 HIGHER Education Minister Malakai Tabar says Papua New Guineans has the right to better themselves. 

He said on Friday during a second launching of the K430 million Konoagil oil palm project at  Semalu village on West Coast Namatanai, New Ireland

Tabar described the project as the “light of dawn, a new morning” for the people of Namatanai, one of the least-developed areas in New Ireland and PNG.

“This means that you must wake up from your sleep. It means that you must have plans for what is to happen today.

“I must admit that many of us cannot provide very-basic services for our families.

“Through this project, we will go a long way. Through thus project, we will improve ourselves.” Tabar, a former agricultural officer, said every family in Namatanai must be encouraged to own an oil palm block.

“We will plant oil palm and we will try to get you, the families, to own a plot of oil palm,” he said.

“Earn an income every two weeks, or every month, and continue to improve your socio-economic status.

“We need to do this so that the child, who is starting his elementary education, will one day go to university.

“If he or she drops out of Grade 12, you must help him or her with K5000 for an upgrade, to go on to university.”

Tabar said the people of Namatanai must now realise “economic independence”. “For 40 years, we’ve been wandering around in the wilderness,” he said. “We really didn’t know what was happening. This generation needs to get across to the other side and get the milk and honey on the land.

“This generation must be allowed to live a better life than what we were.

“We must improve the economic status of you and me.”