Rural service delivery points eyed

 By ELIZABETH MIAE

THE government plans to create service delivery points in rural areas to make services more accessible, National Planning and Monitoring Minister Charles Abel said. 

“When you talk about urbanisation, we tend to think about the major urban centres but you’ve got to look at it in the light of developing urban centres throughout the country,” he said. 

“It goes in line with the government’s concept to create service delivery centres. It’s impractical to expect that government services can be delivered to this rapidly growing population in a scattered manner.”

Abel said it was logical that urban service delivery points were created starting at ward cluster level, then to local level government, district, provincial and regional urban centres. 

He said at each of this point, one had to create urban hubs and those urban hubs would have all the pre-requisite infrastructure and services where people came and avail themselves of it. 

“They can’t all migrate to Alotau, Port Moresby or Lae. Government is trying very hard with this process of decentralisation, capacity and pushing funding down.”

“It’s part of our planning framework, we just got to encourage and do it better and it’s about focusing on particular accessible service points in the delivery chain that goes all the way down to the ward level.”

Abel encouraged people who had left their villages and migrated to the urban centres to go back home and cultivate their gardens and traditional areas. 

He also touched on the issue of why people were migrating and causing so many issues to places like Port Moresby and Lae. 

“Once we get communication services on and you’re able to travel in and out of the provinces, you’ll find that public servants will want to go back and people will be more encouraged to stay back at home.”