Eastern Highlands Province

And police are now appealing to women in the province to be mindful of their timing when moving about.

Acting Superintendent David Seine says most of these rape cases were reported to have occurred between 10pm and 3am.

Committed by opportunists, the PPC extended his appeal to the public in Goroka to be mindful of their surroundings and be accompanied by males when moving about at night.

They are calling on the provincial and National Government to address this.

PMV owner Kops, from Goroka, said the bad road condition is affecting their business and revenue generation.

Operators have to fork out more than what they used to for fuel, repair and maintenance.

But an exception can be made for Goroka town. Especially when the first thing you see is clean streets…smiling people…and beautiful artefacts lining the pathways; you know you’re at home.

Goroka is the capital of Eastern Highlands Province – home to PNG’s peace-loving and easy-going group of people.

It is the first province into the Highlands region, and can be seen as the centre point for trade, attracting those from nearby coastal provinces like Madang and Morobe.

The transmission tower supplies power to Lae and Madang from the Ramu 1 powerhouse at Yonki.

However, it was toppled by a severe landslide in January 18, 2018, and disrupted power supply to customers in these two main regions.

This damage has also contributed to power instability in the Ramu Grid (Highlands, Lae and Madang) and it’s an urgent reconstruction project that PPL engineers are undertaking.  

The tower is located near the source of Singsing Creek, approximately two kilometres from the main Okuk Highway and impossible to access.

Numu told the delegates that his province is always ready to step in to any partnership agreement with any member economies.

He added that his administration’s main aim is to foster a five-year economic development plan focusing on three key priority areas:

1. Agriculture;
2. Trade and investment; and
3. Road infrastructure

Numu further added that the road ahead in the bilateral meetings seems very promising but needs technical expertise support.

They launched their coffee cooperative group and a 100,000 coffee seedling nursery and sold the first 10,000 to a coffee processing firm.

Officiating at the occasion was MP for Goroka Open and Vice Minister for Agriculture and Livestock, Henry Ame.

Ame said the O’Neill/Abel government is focused on growing the agriculture sector and has allocated close to K1 billion. He therefore urged the growers to utilise this opportunity to take part actively in agricultural activities.

Eastern Highlands provincial police commander, Alex N’Drasel, said around 4 to 5 armed men entered the bank’s Priority Banking area and robbed a BSP client.

They took off with K567,000 cash.

PPC N’Drasel said between 10am and 11am, the robbers drove into the Priority Banking area and parked there.

Soon after, the accountant of Shanda Trading, including an Asian man and their driver, drove into the parking lot.

When the female accountant stepped out of the vehicle to enter the bank, the men got out with high powered guns and held them up.

Local MP Mehrra Minne Kipefa, while presenting the 2016 District Support Grants of K500,000 compliance reports on Wednesday, said the district had opted to take a new approach by way of furnishing their reports in an electronic format for distribution and swift appraisal.  

Kipefa, who is also the Minister for Labour and Industrial Relations, said standards for electronic recording, processing and distribution of financial and other business reports (digital reporting) is the way forward for easy accessibility of acquittal information for decision-making.

This follows an estimated K1 million in damages at one of the province’s largest supermarkets.

The Bintangor Supermarket, which is owned by Simon Sia, who is also the election petitioner against the young leader, was ransacked last Thursday by looters and opportunists.

According to police, the young leader was involved.

It was reported that around 4pm, the Governor entered the supermarket on Thursday, heavily escorted by outside police officers.

He allegedly gave directives for shoppers to get a rice bag each, which added up to K5,000.

This is due to the company continuously intersecting high grades of gold and copper mineralisation at its exploration site in Eastern Highlands Province.

In a statement, K92 Mining says based on the ongoing success of the Kora exploration drill program, the second drill rig is now operating from an underground set up.