Bridging the gap between villages and the district has been a major challenge for the Department of Community Development, Youth and Religion, in delivering services to marginalized Papua New Guineans.
Secretary responsible, Anna Solomon, said this today when opening the 2016 Development Partners Alignment Forum.
She said delivering government services to the district has been problematic because of the missing link bridging the district to the villages.
Solomon said the establishment of several new offices in the Department aims to overcome this disadvantage.
“How can we work together to reach that gap?” Solomon asked development partners representatives.
“Which is why creation of the ‘Office of Religion’ within the Department was important for us. Creations of ‘Informal Economy Section’ was very important for us. We also have the ‘Elderly Section’, a sector of the community that we always forget about.
“And we’ve got position very relevant to the work that we want to do, in terms of creating a database, having a registry of all the churches and the kind of services they provide so when you come in and you want to help Government do something about a particular project, we know which churches are there,” she said.
The Forum aims to inform local and international development partners about the activities and plans of the Department and how they can align their work within the Department.
The forum is attended by NGOs, foundations and international organisations such as UNICEF and Save the Children.
Also present during the forum was Treasury Secretary, Dairi Vele.