by Vasinatta Yama – EM TV, Port Moresby
Land and Physical Planning Minister Benny Allen today launched the Affordable Land and Housing Project in Port Moresby.
The program aims to address the chronic issue of land and housing problem faced every day by Papua New Guinea’s.
The first project site is at Gerehu in Port Moresby, where houses are completed and ready for titles to be given out. The affordable land and housing program aims to assist all citizens in owning a house, regardless of how much they earn.
It will ensure that unused state land is available to everyone at an affordable price. Undeveloped state land will also be identified and made available to ordinary citizens to build affordable houses.
Minister Allen says that with the new program, housing prices will be reduced. Land portions have been made available at Gerehu, Stage 3B. Houses are already being built; the next stage is to issue titles to interested citizens. Through this housing program, more settlemen’s will be transformed to suburbs.
To build new houses and conduct land surveying, new surveying equipment, or “DRONE”, was also launched today by Ministers Allen and Abel.
The “DRONE” will survey allocated land by taking aerial views to ensure time is not wasted, and also to give accurate figures. It will also detect which areas the land compensation is issued in order to make work easier.
The government aims to build 40,000 houses by 2017 under this program.
However, this can be achieved if the program is extended to districts and other provinces. Four pilot provinces are NCD, Morobe, East New Britain and Western Highland province.
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