Wewak town to get city status

By JACKLYN SIRIAS
Wewak town is expected to become a city soon, mayor Charles Malenki says.
He said Wewak was among a number of other towns in the country that were expected to take on city status.
“Our urbanisation programme is ready to be launched but we are only waiting for funds to do that,” he said.
Malenki said as part of the urbanisation programme, they would be looking into relocating some settlements, evicting people back to their villages and demolishing settlements. Targeted settlements are those that are faced with overcrowding, social issues, and those that had water and sanitation problems.
“We would also be looking at asking business houses to start providing housing schemes for employees in the province,” he said.
Malenki said there would be measures in place to stop people from destroying developments in the province as they were working on improving the town to become a city.
“Our town is easy to improve when all of us work together to achieve developments and positive changes,” Malenki said.
Meanwhile, he said the town commission would start collecting land fees from people, business houses and other stakeholders for the use of and State lands.