Staff housing included in Pomio hospital project

By ROSELYN ELLISON
CONSTRUCTION of East New Britain’s Pomio District Hospital at the Palmalmal Government Station is progressing, with at least 30 staff houses included in the project, says local MP Elias Kapavore.
Kapavore said the project was funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) for more than K40 million and was into stage six of 10 phases.
He said the final phase would see the installation of medical equipment at this level four district hospital, the first to be funded by the ADB in PNG under its health sector programme.
Kapavore said K3 million was allocated to the ENB health authority (PHA) to recruit officers to work at the hospital.
He commended PHA chief executive officer Dr Ako Yap for the budget submitted last year to source funding support for hospital staff recruitment.
He said there had been incidents where new health facilities constructed in parts of the country, were done without consideration of staff recruitment into those facilities.
Kapavore appealed to the provincial physical planning board to allow the construction of the project to continue, while the technical team looked at meeting the conditions set by the board because that was a donor-funded project, which had a time limited to the funding.
He raised concern that if the delay continued, Pomio might lose this funding from ADB and the Australian government.
Kapavore explained that a recent meeting between the ADB technical team and a team from the province.
This saw some positive outcomes among which identified areas that needed the relaxing of some conditions.
While an agreement was expected to be signed between the Pomio district development authority and New Britain Drillers to work on a new water supply design for the district following consultations with Water PNG last year.
He added that the project had been delayed for 12 months already and therefore, assured that the development authority would continue to work with stakeholders to progress the project.