Sir Puka praised for his work

I REFER to the letter ‘Is Sir Puka missing in action’, published in The National on Dec 6.
Contrary to your headline, Sir Puka has been a very busy men since returning to office in 2018.
Firstly at the national level, when Sir Puka Temu took over the health ministry in August last year, all major hospitals and health facilities in the provinces were out of medical supplies.
Fast forward to December 2018 and the shortage of medical supplies is almost nonexistent.
Last month, a number of medical facilities in the Morobe complained that they had run out of medicines.
Sir Puka simply told those managing the facilities to get off their backsides and go to the area medical store in Lae to place their orders where stocks were already available.
The shortage of medical supplies has been a persistent problem at the Health department for many years and will not be resolved in one year.
Thankfully Sir Puka has secured another big budget so the Health department can continue to iron out the remaining issues affecting the consistent supply of medicines to the health facilities.
When the polio outbreak was reported in April this year, Sir Puka moved swiftly to mobilise the national health workforce, international donors and the World Health Organisation to deal with the issue urgently.
I read recently in your newspaper that over three million children have been vaccinated.
That is an outstanding achievement in six months and the public should be grateful to the people of Abau who keep returning Sir Puka at every election.
At the electoral level, I recently read in the print media that the O’Neill Government has approved a major sugar project for the Cocolands area of Cloudy Bay in the Abau district.
I saw a picture of a smiling Sir Puka with the Minister for Agriculture Benny Allan and the Minister for State Enterprises
William Duma witnessing the signing of an Memorandum Of Understanding with the investors.
No, Sir Puka is not missing in action but making things happen.
I note that the author of the article referred to the election promises but an explanation for this has already been given.
Last year Prime Minister Peter O’Neill and Deputy Prime Minister Charles Abel both announced that districts would not get their full K10 million in 2017.
In fact the districts got only K2 million last year and this funding shortfall has affected programmes at the district level – not just in Abau but throughout the country.
The proof is that there were a number of similar complaints from other districts published by your newspaper on the same day, one was titled ‘Morata crying out for help’ while another read ‘Rigo struggles’.
The problem with Sir Puka’s critics and opponents is that they don’t know what’s happening around them and they don’t know what goes on in Abau.
That’s why they keep making meaningless and outdated complaints about issues to which they already know the answers to.
The government’s financial issues have been well documented over the past two years.
Perhaps it’s time for a rethink.
Maybe Sir Puka, as the architect of Alotau Accord 1 and 2, should start pushing to abolish the free education policy so the government can save money to do others things people like Vethalo Ava are complaining about.
You can bet that if the government abolishes free education, all this same people who always criticise the government and Members of Parliament for not doing enough will be the first ones to scream for help.

Maripamu Namu
Aroma Coast