PNG Prime Minister James Marape

PM Marape is traveling to Esa'ala by chopper from Port Moresby. He will make visit the town of Alotau before his arrival to Esa'ala District.

The Prime Minister will also be launching the Esa'ala District Community Development Center and the DDA's Police Housing Project.

The Community Development Center also houses a transit home in its premises.

The MOU amount of the project is worth K2.40 million with K500, 000 counter in DSIP funds from the district to the Department of Community Development and Religion.

He said the Foreign Affairs Minister has apologized to the people of Papua New Guinea for the remarks he made on Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

Marape said he was also offended by Tkatchenko’s remarks, labelling social media critics of his daughter as “primitive animals”, but had accepted the minister’s apology and asked all Papua New Guineans to do likewise and forgive.

“We should not be labelling our citizens as ‘primitive animals’ even if they have wronged us” he said.

PM Marape chose to recount his experience of the tour he made through the trans-hinterland where he met with some of the marginalized people in the remotest part of the country, a country outside of Port Moresby.

On Friday last week, he was at Normad River in Western Province revisiting his roots of 50 years ago. He said time seem to have frozen because nothing changed from 50 years ago it is still the same today.   

PM Marape was the keynote speaker at the Public Service Dedication Service today at the Sir John Guise Indoor Stadium in Port Moresby.

PM Marape opened his speech by recounting his experience during the last week travelling across the country visiting extremely remote and most neglected people and places.

Prime Minister James Marape reminisced his experience with the remote places he visited recently.

He shared this during the handover of the audited financial accounts for Mineral Resources Development Company for years 2018-2019. 

Prime Minister Marape stated that a record budget K24 billion was delivered and look forward to fully rolling out the budget, tailored to lift the people tin helping the people to a better place.

“You will see more allocation to the police for the first time including retiring former police awards that no government has attended to them in the past. We putting money for additional 20 Supreme Court and National Court judges.

He made the remarks in response to an editorial published by a PNG news organisation that claimed former Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop had belittled Papua New Guinea at the PNG Mining and Petroleum Conference in Sydney this week.

"Nothing could be further from the truth," said Prime Minister Marape, who attended the conference in Sydney on Monday.

“The people of Australia and PNG demand an apology from the news organization for what seems to be a deliberate attempt to damage good relations between our two countries.”

The agreements are to upgrade key power and road networks across Papua New Guinea.