By JOE GURINA
Central province governor Robert Agarobe is adamant to reposition and realign the province through its Integrated Development Plan 2019-2022 and the Corporate Plan 2020-2022 that was recently launched in Port Moresby.
Though late to come up with the three year integrated provincial plan, Governor Agarobe said the provincial plan was designed to capture his Smart Plan that will drive the province into the next dimension.
He said the five key elements of the Integrated Provincial Plan are to rethink reposition, rebuild, rebrand and replenish the province.
In the last three years we managed to put together a good sync between the government and the administration.
Agarobe said the vision was to create a smart province aimed for professional excellence, economic prosperity, and social justice to achieve a smart, productive and sustainable future.
He said the policy directions inherited by his government is mainly anchored on three economic development pillars of agriculture, tourism and sports.
He elaborated that when he first set out on the journey, he had one main agenda and that was to push for the provincial identity and economic empowerment for the people.
‘’At that time, I thought it was going to be easy given my background as a businessman.
“However, immediately after taking office, I realized that it was easier said than done. The very first thing I did was to make strong political statement and to proactively engage my people in a trust worthy relationship,’’ he said.
He said social services remain an integral priority of his government given the constitutional grants support on annual basis.
“What we are doing is to add value in a shared partnership to improve quality for social services in education, health, community development and church sectors.
“We are creating incentives to add value to the above priorities to engage people, investors and partners to join us in this journey to rebuild our villages, wards, LLGs, districts and the province.
“The Smart plan captures my vision of building a smart structure enabling the administration to continuously and efficiently provide service delivery to our people.
“The New Corporate Plan ensures this priority to resource ongoing service programs in the districts and LLGs rather than here in Port Moresby.
“It aims to improve corporate visibility, competitiveness and credibility by improving governance and administrative structures/systems, improve social services delivery, increase economic development and internal revenue and decentralization of provincial autonomy,’’ Agarobe said.
He said the delay in completing and launch of the Smart plans in the last three years were due to alignment requirement to MTDP III, which was launched in September 2018, the change in government in 2019, the alignment of Agarobe-Marape manifesto and the 2020 CCovid-19 situation in the country and globally.
