New city hall symbol of authority

By MATTHEW VARI

Sunday, December 14, 2014 (Sunday Chronicle, PNG)

THE new city hall should be ready by May next year- the construction has been completed with now only electrical and painting to be done for the new city hall.

NCD Governor Powes Parkop said that it would be a symbol for the city showing its progress moving forward into the future.

“It should show the authority of our municipal government, it is important our government institutions in the towns and cities have a physical presence that can show that there is an authority and order in place,” Governor Parkop said.

“If the buildings are deteriorated like some of our provincial assemblies, it just gives a bad impression to the people of a particular province or town or city.”

“All cities put efforts to improving image by building authoritative structures. When you have the absence of that kind of authority- you will have opportunist that think that they can do what they want, because they don’t respect that there is an authority and government in place.”

He said that the new city hall is not too iconic, but will be reflective of the city in portraying the authority’s existence.

“The rules and regulations enforced by NCDC are not there to inhibit our people doing what they want to do- it is just to get us to cooperate and respect each other and live together as decent people,” Parkop said.

“If we do not have that then anarchy will reign, and we have been having that anarchy for a while which is the reason why we have built this.”

Parkop added that the construction of the building would save the commission a considerable amount of money in terms of rents that were being paid to house a portion of his administration at the Lagatoi Haus building in Waigani.

“It will also save costs as we are currently renting the Lagatoi Haus and I think it costs between K300,000 to K400,000 a month and you do the math to see how much we are paying annually for many years now,” he said.

“The new city hall has been funded by a bank loan, but this time we will use that money not to pay for the leases but to service the loan and after a while we will be free of that debt, so there is no extra costs going to the taxpayers of our city as the same money for rent will be diverted for the loan repayments.”