The Governor for Central Province, Rufina Peter, expressed the need for genuine public service in the Central Province Government.
Apart from her appalled reaction towards the previous state of the Central Province Governor’s office and residence of which she dubbed as “reckless and wilful negligence of significant state assets”, the Governor also admitted that her first eight months in the office had been challenging and often disappointing.
“I have witnessed first-hand lack of transparency, responsibility, commitment and professional work ethics”, she said.
She said that although servants of the public have the mentality of “what’s in it for me?” this has always been evident in the public sector and she wanted to discourage that, going forward during her term in office.
In the interest of achieving such, the Governor said her Provincial Executive Council (PEC)had been having consultations with the various divisions concerned.
The Governor explained that this was to;
- identify and understand existing challenges and issues and
- to inspire and raise awareness for effective output individually and collectively as custodians of the development journey of Central Province.
As a result is the initiation of the performance award system, where best performing staff of the administration sectors were given an award on Friday in recognition for their professional and ethical contributions to their line of work for the year 2022.
Peter said the PEC had also extended this award system initiative to include the 16 LLGs on the categories of “safe ward”, “clean ward”, “accountable ward” and “self-reliant ward” awards, of which she herself will be presenting to the concerned wards during her electoral visits during the year.
Meanwhile, also as a result of the PEC consultations, the governor had affirmed that a funding of K2 million was approved and allocated to the building of a temporary office space in place of the partially burnt down administration block of the Central Province located at Konedobu.
“Unfortunately, the work only started a month ago,” the governor said.
The governor made this statement in her remarks on Friday during the opening ceremony of the newly renovated Central Province Governor’s office at Konedobu, Port Moresby.
