Community leaders meet in Madang to plan for 2017 elections
24 July 2016
AROUND 70 community leaders from Madang Province met this week to discuss the lack of development taking place in the provinces and to begin organising ahead of the 2017 national election.
The meeting was arranged by community advocacy group Act Now! and was hosted by the Tropical Gem community network.
“Successive governments have failed to improve the lives of most people, especially those living in rural areas and urban settlements”, said Act Now! program manager, Effrey Dademo (pictured).
“Government’s have been too focused on large scale resource extraction projects like mines and logging that boost economic growth but do not help ordinary people.”
“We see huge amounts of money being stolen through corruption or wasted on infrastructure projects in Port Moresby and a small elite who are becoming extremely wealthy, but for most people life just gets tougher.”
Act Now! says issues like land grabs, experimental seabed mining and the proposed Frieda River mine show the government is not serious about implementing its own national strategy for responsible and sustainable development and does not understand the real meaning of development.
“Economic growth that does not take care of our social needs and respect the environment is not development” says Ms Dademo. “We need economic activities that respect PNG ways and support local communities”.
"Our national leaders have been captured by foreign governments and are working to enrich themselves and global corporations to the detriment of our people, our environment and our culture”
The timing is right. We must start now to weed of the all lot of members who supported the corrupt practices.
Posted by: Joe Digiben | 24 July 2016 at 02:16 PM
Yes we have to educate our people so we can have right people to be elected. The current MPs who voted for Peter O'Neill have to be written off.
They don't have heart for our province that's facing big problems.
Posted by: Michael Madud | 24 July 2016 at 10:51 AM