Province defends lanco in supplement

Islands, Normal
Source:

The National, Tuesday February 11th, 2014

 EAST New Britain has defended a newspaper supplement which featured a landowner company and its development efforts last month.

Bernard Lukara, first secretary to ENB governor Leo Dion, was referring to a supplement published in The National on Friday, Jan 31, which had been receiving some flak from the public.

He said the provincial government policies referred to in the supplement were initiated by previous leaders, including former Gazelle MP Sinai Brown, former Prime Minister and Kokopo MP Sir Rabbie Namaliu, former ENB Governor and Pomio MP Francis Koimanrea and Nakikus Konga.

Lukara said issues featured in the article were operational and on implementations and not on policy initiatives.

He said these were further developed by Dion when he became governor.

“I was privileged to have played an active role in these policies’ initiation and formulation stages not only as a senior staff of the provincial executive management team of the provincial administration but more so as project manager of the Gazelle Restoration from 2003 to 2006.

“We formulated the medium term restoration programme and successfully secured a K185 million loan from the World Bank which was sanctioned by the national government but negotiated by our own team,” Lukara said.