Solomon thankful for gender violence, child welfare funding

RELIGION, Youth and Community Development Secretary Anna Solomon has thanked the Government for allocating funds to address gender-based violence and child protection in the country.
“This is the first time ever GBV and child protection received allocation in the budget,” she said.
She also thanked the Government for funding three new offices in the department for the elderly, informal and religion sections.
Solomon said the department had K62 million to address social issues next year.
Of this, she said K38 million came from the Government and K24 million from development partners.
Solomon said K10 million would be used to conduct awareness on sorcery, HIV-AIDS and other social issues in the country.
“Our focus now is on building the management information system so that we have all the information on children centralised, especially issues affecting our children,” she said.
“At the moment we only have information on children in Port Moresby.”
She also stressed that non-government organisations to work closely with the Government in dealing with social issues.
“They (non-governmental organisations) have to work with me and not in isolation.
“My job is to coordinate and know who is doing what out there, you cannot bypass the Government.”