Yatu: LLG officers need training

By SALLY TIWARI
LOCAL level government officers and ward members need proper capacity building training to effectively coordinate and manage development in their local communities, Institute of Public Administration acting director, Yala Yatu said.
Yatu said LLG officers and ward members must be able to draw- up plans, among other tasks, such as preparing proposal documents, so they could take ownership of what they did in the community.
He said during a two-day local government competency workshop last week in Port Moresby that the Department of Local Level Government and Provincial Affairs was a significant department but “needs to build the capacity of its officers in terms of skills and knowledge”.
Yatu said the department had a very good network established with more than 300 local level governments, including the wards.
The aim of the workshop was to set competency standards for local government services.
Yatu said the expected outcome of the workshop was to ensure that draft standards for LLGs were confirmed for curriculum development.
He said the workshop was important as its outcome would identify specific local government programmes to be designed and developed for the department in training its local level government officers.
He said since the institute was shifting from the traditional classroom-based teaching into the competency-based training and assessment mode, the workshop had helped them to identify programmes that they could deliver.
The workshop was attended by key stakeholder organisations like the National Training Council, DPLGA, and Institute of Public Administration, which took part in setting competency standards for LLGs throughout the country.
Yatu said they adapted and reset the competency standards and qualifications of the local government training institute of Australia to meet PNG’s needs.