Deputy PM and Lae Open MP John Rosso makes his remarks
It gives me great pleasure to join Health Minister Dr Lino Tom, Housing Minister Dr Kobby Bomareo, Health Secretary Dr Osborne Liko, Deputy Australian Head of Mission to PNG Dr Joanne Loundes and the Morobe Provincial Health Authority to officially opened the Tent City and West Taraka Urban Clinics yesterday.
For Tent City, the brand new Level 3 clinic will provide post natal care, labour delivery, dental service, x-ray, surgery and general outpatient services.
It comes with six brand new staff houses and will managed and staffed by the Lutheran Health Services. For the first time in PNG, about 90% of church health workers are now be paid by National government's Alesco payroll system.
A big thankyou to the Australian Government for funding this vital infrastructures, the Marape PANGU-led government, National Department of Health and also our partners the MoPHA, Lae City Authority and the ELCPNG for providing the land on which the facility is being built on.
Partnership is the way forward for development in PNG and we are grateful to have our local stakeholders and international partners working hand in hand to deliver high quality and much needed service delivery infrastructure to our people.
This facility will now ease up the backlog of patients that go all the way to ANGAU Hospital for treatment. It will greatly help our people of Tent City, Bumayong and the surrounding areas in accessing quality health care.
At West Taraka, a similar facility was opened. The West Taraka urban clinic will serve more than ten thousand people in the Taraka area.
The Lae City Authority also bought and presented a brand new 15-seater bus to be used in transporting staff at both Tent City and West Taraka clinics.
According to Huon Gulf MP and Minister for Community Development, Youth & Religion Hon. Jason Peter, this is by far the biggest project in West Taraka for almost forty-years and the people are grateful for this gift from the people and government of Australian.
Bikpla thankyou to the government and taxpayers of Australia for being our biggest development partner. They have invested not only in the health sector, but also in other vital sectors in our nation's development.
The onus is now on the people to look after the facility and staff for the benefit of everyone including our children. Anyone who vandalise the property and harass nursing staff will be dealt severely by police.
If we cry for better government services, we must also take ownership and look after these very important facilities. Not just the health facilities, but schools, classrooms, roads, street lights etc.
Plans are in place to make Tent City urban clinic become our district hospital for Lae where we will have a resident doctor and medical specialists serving our people.
I would like to commend the MoPHA Board Chairman David Wissink, CEO Dr Kipas Binga and his team of good board and management who are working tirelessly to ensure health services reach the ten districts of Morobe.
We need more medical doctors and nursing officers to manned the new health facilities. With only fifty doctors graduating at the UPNG medical school every year, there's a great demand for specialist medical professionals across the country.
The Marape-Rosso government is equally concerned about this and the appointment of Dr Lino is no mistake as he is working tirelessly to ensure this very important sector gets the full backing of this government.
Many people would say Tent City, Bumayong, Igam and West Taraka are in the Nawaeb and Huon Gulf districts respectively, but we all belong to Lae City.
It's not about the land boundary, we are all part of a greater Lae and the LCA is committed to ensure we deliver state of the art and long lasting infrastructures to our people of Lae.
We will also have a brand new urban clinic for Butibam and Milfordhaven which will be fully funded by the taxpayers of Lae through LCA. That is because of transperancy in managing our funds and revenues under LCA.
LCA is also investing in St Johns Ambulance service so that our people are given the best pre-hospital services on their way to get medical treatment.
These services have been deprived for our people for many years until now we have good leadership in our city.
The Tent City barracks to Bumayong road concrete sealing will commence soon once the designs are complete. Tent City street roads will be sealed after Kaisa.
The LCA is partnering with the Huon Gulf DDA to build a brand new police station for West Taraka, fixing their street roads and also assisting long term residence obtain their land titles.
It's not going to happen overnight, but we are committed in ensuring that we deliver these projects on time for the betterment of our communities.
Thank you everyone and we look forward to continue develop Lae City in partnership with good prudent management by ensuring that we continue to lay foundation of good management, governance and transperancy to lure more development partners.
Once again, thankyou Australian Government for your generosity in funding this vital projects. The Marape-Rosso PANGU government for the foresight and vision and all our stakeholders and development partners in ensuring these projects are delivered on time with no variations.
