Morobe province

With hundreds of Grade Eight students performing well in their 2023 national examinations, secondary schools in Lae are now unable to fit them all in.

The top schools of Bugandi, Lae Secondary and Busu are turning students and their parents and guardians away due to limited space.

14-year-old Sandra William was initially selected from Omili Primary School to continue her Grade Nine at the Lae Secondary School.

Member for Menyamya, Solen Loifa, encouraged his electorate, in Morobe Province, to welcome the growth of their district.

The lack of proper roads and basic services has always been a challenge for the remote Menyamya district.

Under the leadership of their young visionary leader, the rugged face of the electorate is slowly changing.

Speaking at the opening of their state-of-the-art Umba Community Health Post on Tuesday, Loifa encouraged the people of Kome Rural LLG to allow development to take place.

With regular heavy downpours, the rough dirt tracks of Menyamya, in Morobe Province, are almost impassable. Even on sunny days, it would take three hours for a vehicle to reach Umba from Menyamya Station.

During Tuesday’s opening of the new and fully-equipped K5.1 million Umba Community Health Post, locals and health workers at Kome Rural LLG expressed their heartfelt gratitude for the facility.

The health counsellor of the Australian High Commission, Dr. Lara Andrews, outlined this during the opening of the long-awaited K5.1 million Umba Community Health Post on Tuesday, the 30^th of January.

Normally, it takes the people of Umba two days to walk to the Menyamya Health Centre to access medical help. Most times, they lose their loved ones along the way and have to turn back home.

Units from the Royal PNG Constabulary and the PNG Defence Force responded to reports of a gathering crowd at Two-Mile at around 9am.

Backup was called when it was obvious that the crowd size was too big; over 200 men, women and children were loitering around the area.

Office buildings have been closed as staff were told to remain at home, or were turned back by police.

With the looting and ransacking that happened in the nation’s capital yesterday, opportunists are hoping to have a go at shops and business houses today.

Police had to disperse groups at Chinatown, Top Town and Eriku this morning. Residents heard gunshots as early as 7am.

Residents and the business community may have been aware or impacted over Christmas by a dispute from the Lae City Council, which restrained municipal functions and collections by court order 336/2023 of December 12^th, 2023.

This order has now been set aside in its entirety and LCA resumes all functions and collections.

A landslide occurred at Umbaku, in Leron-Wantoat, at 5am on Friday, December 29th, 2023, killing three people while a young man is still missing. An unconfirmed number of people were also injured.

Houses were destroyed, food and cash crop gardens buried and water sources contaminated. 

Officers from the Morobe Provincial Disaster Office provided K2,000 worth of food supplies and shelter to Matap on Wednesday, January 3rd, while the Markham District Development Authority is yet to visit the affected area. 

Business Link Pacific, a private sector development programme delivered by DT Global and funded by the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, recently hosted an information session at the Butibam Resource Centre in the Ahi Rural LLG of Lae district.

The session was hosted in collaboration with the Internal Revenue Commission and consultancy accounting firm, Oracle Pacific Ltd, which is also an approved Business Link Pacific advisor.

He then outlined the district’s achievements in 2023: