By GABRIEL KATUHO
A NATIONALLY owned financial company, McBRO Financial Limited, has donated K50, 000 in support of the New Catholic Parish Church building in Western Highlands Province.
The support will go towards Sinsibai Parish of Mt. Hagen Archdiocese in the upper-Nebilyer area of the Tambul-Nebilyer district of Western Highlands Province.
Poika-Palgme tribe/community with the growing population, the Sinsibai Parish situated in the Poika-Palgme community cannot cater for the number people.
The Old church building which was built during colonial times (around 1960 or 1970) is becoming small with the growing population.
The new church building can cater for 600 people.
Seeing the need for a new church building, fundraising Chairman Allan Sumb and Fundraising Secretary Anthony Gonol have taken the responsibility to help the parishioners raise funds for the new building.
They started doing fundraising since 2019 and raised K500, 000 which was used as a startup capital for the new building foundation.
“The money was used to purchase some of the church materials and started the foundation of the building,” Sumb said.
“From the architectural design the new church building will have the capacity of catering 600 plus people and the total cost of the building is K4 million,” he said.
Given the remoteness of the community with most of local people not earning regular income to raise the K4 million, Sumb is stepping in to help his community.
Allen Sumb, who is also the Lecturer at the University of Devine Ward in Madang, is coordinating tasks with some of the elites in the community who are working and leaving around PNG.
He thanked Western Highlands Governor Wai Rapa who also made a donation of K100, 000 towards the church building.
“That was also helpful towards the purchasing of the church materials. We purchased some iron beams and still need to purchase some columns as well,” said Mr Sumb.
“The foundation is done and we need money to purchase iron beams and some columns,” he added.
The fundraising chairman said they have exhausted the funds for the materials for the foundations which was completed last year.
With much gratitude he acknowledged McBRO Finance Limited for donating K50, 000 cheque towards the new building which is more from a locally owned financial company to do.
McBRO Finance Limited Managing Director, Thomas Dumu, who is also from the same community was happy to help the church which he believes that it is for the worthy course.
“McBRO Finance is coming onboard to assist churches and community-based projects, as our main motives behind this is just to make sure we need to build the church to get the majority of the population especially the young children back into church,” Dumu said.
“Upbringing the children in the church is helpful than letting them roam around the streets and engage in a lot of things and then all of a sudden we realize that people start to have a lot of attitude issues causing allot of law and order issues,” he stated.
McBRO is a nationally and locally owned company who got registered in 2015 and operated as a fully flagged finance company in January 2021.
It has over 50 employees around the country in all provinces. One of their products is that they offer soft loan to most of their clients who are the public servants.
Apart from the donation the Sinsibai Parish is calling on the business houses and cooperate sponsors to come forward to help.
The competition of the church building is expected in three years’ time.
