The Goroka District Development Authority has successfully acquired three land titles for sports and recreational parks around Goroka town.
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Lands and Physical Planning John Rosso presented the land titles to Member for Goroka Aiye Tambua and the Goroka District Development Authority (DDA) team in Port Moresby on Wednesday (July 2, 2025.
Tambua said the three titles acquired were for Rotary are located at the center of Goroka town. He said this was a significant exercise undertaken by the Goroka DDA to secure the state land from illegal land grabbing.
“I can confirm now that we’ve received three land titles for three key lands within Goroka Town. These reserved lands are Peace Park, National Park and Rotary Park,” Tambua said.
“The main idea behind this is that we do not want illegal land grabbing and we want to protect these important reserved lands for our future generations.
“On behalf of the people of Goroka I would like to thank the Lands Secretary, Benjamin Samson and Minister John Rosso for giving us the title. In Goroka town, we don’t have much land, the land is scarce so whatever land that is reserved we are now trying to protect them.”
Moreover, Rosso commended Tambua and the Goroka DDA for their effort in securing the land. He said said recreational parks and reserved land in all towns and cities around the country must be protected.
“Recreational parks must be protected,” Rosso said.
“Even in my district in Lae there has been instances where recreational parks have been taken by people for other use but we’ve reclaimed them and handed them over to the Lae City Authority to manage them.
“I am glad to see that the Member for Goroka has gone down that path and I think this should be emulated in all towns, cities and districts.
“We’ve also targeted Goroka as a town to be expanded so we will be working closely with the Member for Goroka and the DDA to expand in some parts of the town so that we can build a couple more suburbs to cater for the growing population.”
