Warning welcomed

The National Letters

THE overdue warning given by NCD Governor Powes Pakop to non-performing staff is welcomed.
In support of the governor’s concerns, I wish to highlight very important issues that are yet to be understood and solved to meet the requirements of the general public in Port Moresby and NCD. These are my observations after living in the city since 2003. The city has been developing and growing at a snail’s pace. Port Moresby should have been developed long time ago, why is city development still focused in NCD? By now the government should be focusing on developing other towns of the 20 other provinces- fair and equal distribution of wealth.
Below are my opinion of the non-performaning NCDC staff but there maybe a few who are the true servants of people:

  1. Any organisation such as the NCDC has vision and mission statements with its strategic goals to achieve in order to bring about beneficial changes.
  2. The top management team is responsible for implementing those vision /mission statements. Over the years we didn’t have smart people leading NCDC to plan and manage the settlement and urban areas in alignment with the strategic goals.
  3. Point two above requires capable human resource and capabilities, and innovation and creativity to design, plan and develop the city. The leaders in the functional departments responsible for developing settlements to suburb lack project management skills and knowledge associated to urbanisation and development. Lacking this human knowledge and skills, development doesn’t progress in any situation.
  4. The people who work at NCDC always think that they want to get rid of the people living in the settlements. Is that all you know about your work? Find out why are people living in the settlements? Why do they build settlements? Do they have money to build good, permanent houses?
    Do they contribute to the economy of NDC and PNG?
  5. Your job is to find innovative and creative methods to design and develop solutions to bring about beneficial changes. If you can’t do that, I think the NCD governor is right to show you the way out. You don’t work at NCDC to hire bulldozers and send enforcement team to bulldoze settlements, thinking you have achieved a beneficial change for NCDC and PNG.
  6. I believe the housing minister, land minister and NCD governor are working in collaboration to bring about tangible development, but their mission must be understood well, with intelligence and staff working in NCDC must plan to be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Timely).

Mamaites Kusi, Port Moresby