Papua New Guinea Forest Authority (PNGFA) received a cheque worth K300,000 from the Western Highlands Provincial Administration as payment to supply a power pole to roll out its rural electrification program in the province.
The acting Provincial Administrator Joseph Mangibal at the PNGFA headquarters in Port Moresby presented the cheque to PNGFA managing director, John Mosoro on August 22, 2023.
Mosoro in thanking the Governor of Western Highlands, Wai Rapa and the acting provincial administrator said; "Forestry is keen to support the provincial administration.
"We are looking at the highlands region to look for land to plant trees because we are not going to rely on our normal natural tropical virgin forest but we have to go into plantation development now.
"The important legislation PNGFA is working on is the Forestry Act and once it comes into force, we will have three things:
- Logging
- Reforestation for land and acquiring grassland and converting them into Forest Management Areas; and
- Carbon trading.
"PNGFA has an office in Mt. Hagen and we intend to bring the Highlands regional office from Goroka to Western Highlands because we are getting good support from the Governor and provincial administrator.”
Mosoro added, “We have the Log Export Development Levy Guidelines that will go through the National Executive Council which can provide some funding to assist the provincial administration to look into reforestation and afforestation programs to plant trees on grasslands.
"PNGFA has offices throughout the country but there are certain provincial governments that support us like providing this kind of funding, office space and sometimes vehicles.”
Forests Minister Salio Waipo also conveyed his sincere appreciation to the Western Highlands provincial administration for their support towards forestry.
He thanked Mangibal, Governor Rapa and committed PNGFA to maintain the working relationship. Mangibal said, "Our administration and the government are committed and working with PNGFA.
"We will support PNGFA in terms of logistics and other support and also with a vehicle for their transportation. We also requested PNGFA management to lease our Highlands Regional office in Hagen and we are prepared to allocate them an office space within our Administration.
“The government is trying to roll out the rural electrification programme and a lot of people are requesting for iron posts but we need to work with PNG Forest Authority because the biggest plantation is in the vicinity of our province so we have to make use of what we have.
"We want to buy the power poles so we are now bringing in the first batch of payment of 3000,000 and by next week we will pay another K300,000 we want the quantity of power posts poles that will be supplied from PNGFA under the managing director," added Mangibal.