To kick off the first day of the 2023 Governors’ Conference yesterday, Governor Powes Parkop in his welcome remarks addressed the Prime Minister of what he believed was a shared concern among the governors for effective provincial governments.
“We governors want to see ourselves as real governments, as sub-national governments that have the capability and ability to the deliver outcomes at the sub-national government level” governor Parkop said.
He stressed that such would enable the provincial governments to help achieve national outcomes.
The NCD Governor, after commending the Prime Minister James for the National Governments support to the provincial governments, expressed that the provincial government should not be treated as a government department.
Expressing that the provincial government is always on the ground to deal with the issues the people face, the NCD governor stated that so far the provincial government is yet to be properly empowered to sort these issues out and hoped this dialogue would be the opportunity to identify outcomes that will lead to such.
He encouraged the Prime minister and the ministers to look at country’s like the US, Australia and India, taking into consideration that their government system of which strived on shared power and hopes the government of the day takes such into consideration.
“It’s a success strategy, it’s working” he stressed.
“Give power back to the people” he said.
By this he expressed, that the National government should look at to decentralize and redesign the political, administrative and Financial structure so as to share power with the provincial government.
The two-day conference that ended today was hosted by the Ministry of Provincial and Local Level Government Affairs under the leadership of Kikori MP Soroi Eoe.
