The New Guinea Islands region has welcomed the national government’s housing policy. Sentiments were shared after the Department of Personnel Management (DPM) outlined two major policy directives at the recent reform workshop for NGI.
One of them is a draft national housing policy, made in collaboration with the National Research Institute.
Host provincial advisor for human resource management under the ENB Provincial Administration (ENBPA), Godfrey Henny, said the national housing policy is good news for the public service.
“The DPM has highlighted a couple of things in terms of housing that has been missing in the past, in terms of home ownership and institutional houses in the province. Through the presentations, we now realise that in order to have officers perform to expectation, we need to provide affordable housing to our officers. This is so we can see development agenda rolled out in the province and districts and LLGs.
“Currently, we are giving out positions to officers without housing.”
Henny said once in place, the province would embrace this national housing policy, to capture the welfare of officers and motivate them to be productive.
“For institutional houses that were built decades ago and are in dire need of renovation because they have become unconducive for habitation, the home ownership scheme can be used to have public servants buy off the houses from the government,” he said.
Housing in the ENBPA currently falls on other sectors like land and technical services divisions, but any future policies for the province will require land availability for either the home ownership scheme or construction of new institutional houses.
The HRM Division Advisor was also grateful to the DPM for assisting to confirm over 170 acting positions in the ENBPA, of which 19 are top management positions.
Apart from housing, the DPM is also looking at modernising terms and conditions of employment for the public service. This includes a new initiative on life and medical insurance policy, which is planned for rollout by 2024.