COMMENTARY
BY ELIAS NANAU
Thirty-nine weeks into toughening rules on border
security and the eventual implementation of the State of Emergency (SoE), there
has been subtle if not rapid change in how we have been doing things.
From household and food hygiene, to social meetings,
shopping, movement and the list is quite lengthy.
Cleanliness tops the practice that we pay much attention
to like it is second nature.
Hand sanitisers have become increasingly popular and
when we enter a building, shop or at our homes, we respond to ensuring our
hands are sanitized or washed thoroughly with soap for 20 seconds.
In the development space, reality strikes and
thrusts itself in our face when Covid-19 response teams in far flung areas encounter
the brutal truth that there are damaged essential roads and other infrastructure
hindering officials to travel past and raise awareness about Covid-19.
A damaged bridge in the Nuku district in West Sepik
for example; or a boggy road passage between Vanimo and Aitape where Papua New
Guinea Defence Force soldiers and provincial Covid-19 officials maneuver themselves
out of it.
People are sharing on social and mainstream media about
the challenges encountered. They are getting into discourse, monitoring and
evaluating their enabling components of development that should make their life
and living meaningful.
In the Western Province, communities do not know
there is a pandemic grappling the world.
They have no access to whatever communication in
telecommunication or radio broadcast.
North Fly Provincial Police Commander Chief
Inspector Silva Sika says people only became aware when security personnel arrived
at their remote communities and began educating them about Covid-19 and the
health and hygiene measures they should follow to avoid getting the deadly virus.
Mr Sika described Western as flat with vast wetlands
that can only be accessible by or on a boat through rivers and fords.
In the West Sepik province, the local radio station
NBC Sandaun is off air and there is communication breakdown between the
provincial Covid-19 team and the population who are sparsely spread across the
lowlands and the highlands in the Telefomin-Oksapmin areas.
A public servant in Aitape, West Sepik, Jajuar Wasa
has raised concern majority of the people of West Sepik are missing out on
vital information about Covid-19 because the local radio station is off air.
They desire that it must be back on air soonest.
These are sticking examples of setbacks and the challenges in
high cost and difficulty in bringing services to people in Papua New Guinea’s
remote communities are real.
But the government and people must work zealously
smart and honestly to counter the challenges and deliver services.
Forest Minister and Telefomin MP Solan Mirisim has
spoken out this month when he, during a small but grand occasion during his
parliamentary tenure reactivated the Telefomin District Development Agreement
(TDDA).
He said working to bring development to his people
is very costly.
From his K10 million annual District Services
Improvement Program (DSIP) funding, at least 40 per cent is spent on logistics
with only 60 per cent is spent on actual infrastructure work.
Mirisim said he needed more money and the K20
million per annum TDDA grant from Ok Tedi’s mining royalties would supplement
his DSIP funds.
His district made available K300,000 to the West
Sepik Province Covid-19 response.
So much has happened within the 39 weeks with
criticisms and endorsements.
We note health and hygiene as biggest up beat lesson
that has stuck out during the SoE.
The SoE controller has relaxed a few regulations as
we transition to the ‘New Normal’.
Let us adopt those health and hygienic culture but
must also endeavor to fix the dilapidated infrastructure and communication
challenges exposed during the Covid-19 response work.
It is no time to blame anyone but politicians,
bureaucrats and people must collaborate and address them.
Let’s live a “New Normal” with improved health and
hygiene practices, fix our dilapidated infrastructure and make communication
in telecommunication or radio and TV broadcast widely accessible.
