By Samuel Raitano
Major pharmaceutical company City Pharmacy Limited (CPL Group) and Enga Provincial Government have initiated a partnership arrangement to assist women farmers in Enga Province.
Under the arrangement, the two organizations plan to establish viable means to help women in the province to store their products and sell to established markets out of the province.
The initiative was announced by CPL Group founder Sir Mahesh Patel and Acting Enga Provincial Administrator Sandis Tsaka recently in Wabag town.
Sir Mahesh said, he will engage his construction engineers to come up with a concept plan on building a cooling and drying system in Wabag for farmers to store their products before transporting to markets in main centres including Port Moresby, Lae and the mining towns.
He said, they will also come up with a cost-effective means of transport to distribute the products to the markets.
Some of the locally produced commodities that his company executives have identified to assist in looking for markets include strawberry, round onion, garlic, variety of spices and Surunki honey among others.
He said, “it looks difficult from here to transport local products to the markets in the main centres,” but this will not stop CPL. Sir Patel said, CPL will try to come up with a viable means of transport to distribute the products to the markets.
Sir Patel also announced separately that his company was planning to build a multi-purpose shopping centre in the heart of Wabag town to be delivered early next year, 2024.
Meanwhile, Enga Provincial Administrator Sandis Tsaka said the Enga Provincial Government has allocated K300, 000 under this year’s budget to fast track the project to address the problem of accessing markets for selling local products which he said had been a major hurdle not only for women but general farmers in the province. Tsaka said, “this will become a thing of the past if the partnership initiative with CLP Group to access markets for our local products becomes successful.”
Enga Governor Sir Peter Ipatas said, he was happy to partner with a major corporate organisation such as the CPL group to assist farmers to access their products in established markets.
He said, he was happy that a big company of CPL Group’s status has raised its hand to put money to helping mostly mothers in the province that are involved in SME activities to sell their products in reputable markets.
