PORT VILA, 11th June 2025 – The Opposition leader was clearly trying to pull wool over the eyes of the public in his latest outbursts against the Government’s performance under the 100-days plan.
The Office of the Prime Minister wishes to clarify that the 66% achievement are the overall indicators of how the Government has performed with regards to the 76 policy initiatives covering the entire government and private sector, which it set out to accomplish since February 11.
The figure in and of itself is a remarkable achievement given the limited time it took to achieve the target.
Prime Minister Jotham Napat says the best that the leader could have done was give credit where it was due. In response to his rhetoric that businesses affected after the earthquake were not yet up and running, the Prime Minister said it seemed the Opposition leader had easily forgotten that it was the Government who came forward with funding assistance that cleared the CBD area within weeks – a task meant to be left to the business and property owners to undertake.
“We supported the private sector to demolish the buildings because most of them could not do it.
“The town is still being cleared but I can assure everyone that once rebuilt Port Vila will be totally transformed for the better. Being resilient, as they have always been, most businesses are pretty much back up and operating in and around Port Vila already so it is quite misleading for him to state that the Government has done nothing,” says the Prime Minister.
Currently, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, together with relevant authorities and agencies are carrying out consultations with members of the pubic and stakeholders on how they would like the new Port Vila to look and feel like going forward.
“This is a highly significant participatory approach to town planning.
“Port Vila City is a town built during the colonial era by the merchants and traders. This is now our opportunity to rebuild our beloved city in a way that reflects our values and aspirations for the future.
“There’s never been a better time. Rather than criticise what the Government has been doing, how about we all work together to rebuild our city,” says the Prime Minister.
With regards to the road conditions, the Government is urging everyone to bear with PWD as they undergo vital training on how to properly do sealing works. Under current planning schedule, PWD will be carrying out sealing works outside of the CBD areas.
In addition, it should be cleared that fixing the roads cannot be done without first fixing the drainage. It requires proper design and planning. That is being done, and with funding support from our partners, we will improve the road conditions within the CBD.
For the other road works around the CBD, our experience is that most sealing works in the past have not been carried out correctly, costing the country lots of money to continuously repeat the same thing. We cannot continue the same approach.
The road maintenance section of the PWD need to be able to master the craft so that more public resources are not wasted.
The Government has also ordered more equipment and machinery which are on their way. Once PWD have them, they will close up all the potholes with better results. This is what resilience building is all about.
On the question of diplomatic passports, the Opposition leader attempted to smear the Government – an obvious political tactic that he seems good at. The public should be made aware that under his tutelage as Minister for Internal Affairs, he signed off on an order that paved the way for practices that have come under scrutiny with people like consulates and Trade Commissioners being granted diplomatic passports, contrary to the Vienna Convention.