LAE’S INTEREST FIRST – The Booming Hub of PNG’s Economy

While critics of Lae Member elect John Rosso will be twiddling their fingers and twisting their tongues making negative criticisms on why he is yet to make up his mind on which political camp to join, wait there’s something you’ve missed.

Lae City is not just the capital of Morobe, but it is the heartbeat of Papua New Guinea. It is where the majority of businesses flourished with the Pacific’s second largest seaport operations and the gateway to the resource rich Highlands region. Lae is the home of several tuna canneries, agriculture and gold export companies for the last 30 years but the depilating state of infrastructures, growing illegal settlements and the law and order problems spurred by high unemployment and lack of tertiary education opportunities leaves a lot to be questioned given it’s contributions to the government coffers.

Lae’s growing challenges lies with equal distribution of wealth to all its citizens including the indigenous and traditional landowners who have embraced the government’s development agenda for almost 50years.

There are many unanswered questions on why Lae has gone back in terms of service provision and economic liability that has been enjoyed back in the 1970s and 80s. The millions of kina generated out of Lae over the last decades have somewhat being mismanaged, thus leaving the once favored economic and industrial hub to crawl on it’s knees.

There are issues with Lae’s city boundaries, which are shared with Huon Gulf and Nawaeb districts. The boundaries will have to be extended towards the Bumbu and Busu Rivers and Nadzab to enable services will be rendered effectively and efficiently under the proposed Lae City Commission. That is why important decisions to do with its political heads needs to be properly scrutinized in order to make a decision which will benefit the greater majority of Lae’s population.

John Rosso following his declaration as the new member for Lae has a massive task ahead to set the foundation to all these outlying issues. Five years cannot be enough to solve all of Lae’s issues, but given the drive and an effective administration under his chairmanship Lae can stand up from it’s knees.

Political horse-trading that is currently in progress can be seen as an opportunity for Lae to be integrated in the new government’s development plan (despite a number of commitments made by the previous governments that were never fulfilled).

Rosso’s alliance with major political parties (excluding PNC) must represent the best interest of his voters, the people of Lae. That is the reason for Rosso’s absence from the political camps in Alotau, Goroka and Kokopo. This doesn’t mean he wont choose either of them, but he will do so with careful considerations on what the Goroka and Kokopo camps have to offer to serve the people of Lae.

On the contrary view, Rosso can somewhat be seen as the unifying factor which National Alliance (NA) and PANGU Pati needs inorder to lure more support from other independent candidates in leading up to the government’s formation.