11/05/2026
STATEMENT BY THE MINISTER FOR NATIONAL PLANNING
HON. SIR ANO PALA, KBE, CMG, ISO, MP
AT THE NATIONAL LAUNCH OF THE PacFresH₂O PROJECT
“Protecting Freshwater, Increasing Resilience”
RABAUL, EAST NEW BRITAIN — MONDAY, 11TH MAY 2026
Good morning, and thank you for welcoming me back to Rabaul.
Why We Are Here, in Rabaul, Today
Four days ago, in Port Moresby, my Vice Minister, the Honourable Daniel Tindipu, MP, stood in for me and launched the regional dimension of the PacFresH₂O Programme — a Euros20 million (PGK104 million) trilateral cooperation between Germany, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. I gave him my word that I would come to Rabaul personally to launch the national chapter of this Programme — because the regional speeches in Port Moresby do not save a single child in Matupit, in Kokopo, in Pomio, or in any of the volcanic, cyclone-exposed coastal villages of this great province. Delivery saves lives. And delivery happens here, on the ground, in the districts.
So I have travelled to Rabaul this morning to do four things, and to do them plainly. First, to officially launch the PacFresH₂O Project for Papua New Guinea. Second, to look the people of Rabaul and Pomio in the eye and tell them what they will receive over the next five years. Third, to look our partners — Germany, GIZ, the Pacific Community, WaterAid, and Live & Learn — in the eye and tell them what this Government expects of them. And fourth, to make a number of binding national commitments that I am prepared to be held to.
The Hard Truth
I will not pretend the situation is anything other than what it is. Across Papua New Guinea, only 42 percent of our citizens have access to basic drinking water, and only 19 percent have access to basic sanitation. In rural areas, sanitation coverage collapses to 18 percent, and rural open defecation is rising, not falling. Poor sanitation costs this country in excess of K2.5 billion every single year — between three and seven percent of our gross domestic product. Eighty-seven percent of those losses are borne by rural communities. Sixty-eight percent fall on children under the age of five. Approximately 4,500 of our children die every year from diseases that a clean glass of water and a bar of soap would prevent.
To meet our 2030 sanitation targets, this country must invest approximately K818 million every year, for the rest of this decade, on sanitation alone. Those numbers are not designed to depress us. They are designed to focus us.
PacFresH₂O and the Take Back PNG Agenda
Under Prime Minister James Marape and the Marape–Rosso Government, this nation has set itself three uncompromising targets. We will grow our economy to K200 billion by the year 2030. We will create one million additional jobs. And we will leave no Papua New Guinean behind in their access to the most basic goods and services that define dignity. PacFresH₂O sits squarely inside that agenda. You cannot grow a K200 billion economy on the backs of women who spend four hours a day fetching unsafe water. You cannot create a million jobs in communities where children are dying of waterborne diseases. And you cannot claim to leave no-one behind when 82 percent of rural Papua New Guineans still have no improved sanitation. Water, sanitation and hygiene is not a sector. It is the foundation of every other sector.
What Rabaul and Pomio Will Receive
Let me speak now to the people of this District directly. Under the PacFresH₂O Project, between 2026 and 2031, the following will be delivered in Rabaul District and Pomio District:
Climate-resilient water supply systems will be rehabilitated and newly installed in selected communities, schools, health facilities and markets, with particular attention to underutilised groundwater — a more reliable resource than the surface springs and rainwater on which most of our villages still depend, and one that is far more resilient to drought, cyclone, and saltwater intrusion.
Improved sanitation and hygiene facilities will be built where our people gather most — schools, aid posts, churches and bus stops — and they will be designed with women, girls and persons with disability in the planning, not as an afterthought.
Climate and hydrological monitoring stations will be installed and integrated with our National Weather Service, so that we can detect and forecast drought and flood, not merely respond to them.
Conservation initiatives — including nature-based protection of the freshwater catchments that feed our villages — will be implemented under a ridge-to-reef approach, because what happens in our forests determines what comes out of our taps.
District WaSH Committees in Rabaul and Pomio, already established under the leadership of the District Administrators, will be strengthened with technical support, training of women leaders, and direct involvement in decision-making at provincial and national levels.
Alternative livelihood opportunities — climate-smart agriculture, agroforestry, ecotourism, sustainable fisheries, and renewable energy — will be supported in our communities so that resilience is paid for, not begged for.
Matupit and the K3.7 Million Commitment
I said in my statement at the launch of the Rabaul District WaSH Plan last month that this Government does not only talk — we deliver. I repeat it this morning, with evidence. The Department of National Planning and Monitoring has committed K3.7 million to fund a proper Water Supply Project for Rabaul District, with priority for the people of Matupit, who have endured for decades the consequences of sitting in the shadow of a live volcano with inadequate access to safe water. That project will commence shortly. It is fully Government-funded. It is not waiting on a donor. It is based on a proper feasibility study and design undertaken by ADRA PNG. It will be delivered. And it will sit alongside, and complement, the work of PacFresH₂O.
Rabaul is therefore the first District in Papua New Guinea to receive a fully DNPM-funded WaSH project of this scale. It will not be the last. But the people of Matupit will be the first to drink from the result.
National Coordination Under the Leadership of Secretary Koney Samuel
On the Papua New Guinea side of this Project, leadership and coordination will be exercised through the Department of National Planning and Monitoring, under the bold and disciplined stewardship of the Secretary, Mr. Koney Samuel, working through the National WaSH Project Management Unit. Secretary Samuel has my full authority and my full confidence. The implementation arrangements with GIZ, with the Pacific Community, with the Climate Change and Development Authority, with the Conservation and Environment Protection Authority, with the Mineral Resources Authority, with the Department of Mineral Policy and Geohazards Management, with the National Weather Service, and with the National Disaster Management Office — all of those arrangements run through the Department of National Planning and Monitoring. There will be one front door for this Project on the Papua New Guinea side. That front door is Secretary Samuel’s office. There will be no parallel structures, no competing reporting lines, and no fragmentation. We have had fifty years of fragmentation in this sector. It ends here.
The NWSHA Bill — September 2026
To end the fragmentation in law as well as in practice, I make a personal commitment this morning, in Rabaul, that the Draft National Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Authority (NWSHA) Bill, together with its Operational Development Plan, will be tabled in the National Parliament during the September 2026 sitting. The Draft Legislation (NWSHA Bill) is being reviewed now. The consultations have commenced. The political will exists. I will not allow this Bill to slip into a future Parliament. NWSHA must be established and operational before the 2027 General Elections, so that the institutional reform we are building today does not depend on the outcome of any single political contest.
Stronger National Institutions and Early Warning
Water security in Papua New Guinea is inseparable from disaster preparedness. We sit on a Ring of Fire. Our people have endured volcanic eruptions in Rabaul and Manam, the Aitape tsunami, the catastrophic earthquakes of Hela, Southern Highlands and Enga, recurrent cyclones and floods, and landslides that have buried entire villages. For too long, our response has been a knee-jerk deployment of the PNG Defence Force after the disaster has already struck. That era must end.
This Government is committed to building stronger, modern, well-resourced national institutions for early warning and disaster resilience. We are investing in the National Weather Service, in the National Disaster Management Office, in the Climate Change and Development Authority, in the Conservation and Environment Protection Authority, in the Mineral Resources Authority, and in the Department of Mineral Policy and Geohazards Management. The climate and hydrological monitoring stations being installed under PacFresH₂O will feed directly into this national early warning architecture. The data we collect on rainfall, on river flow, on groundwater recharge, on water quality — this data is not a project deliverable. It is national infrastructure for the safety of our citizens.
A Word of Challenge to Our Partners
To the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany, and through the Pacific Community to the Blue Pacific family — thank you. The trust you have placed in this country, expressed through Euros10 million (PGK52 million) of Papua New Guinea’s share of this Programme, is not taken for granted. It will be repaid in lives saved.
But let me be candid with our implementing partners. To GIZ, as the financier and lead implementing organisation, and to WaterAid, as the on-the-ground partner in Rabaul and Pomio: this Government will judge you not by the quality of your inception reports, but by what reaches the village. We will judge you by whether the woman in Matupit no longer walks two hours for unsafe water. We will judge you by whether the child in Pomio finishes Grade Six without losing six weeks a year to diarrhoeal illness. We will judge you by whether the District WaSH Committees in Rabaul and Pomio are still functional, still inclusive of women, and still leading their own planning, in 2031. Procurement schedules, gender annexes, monitoring frameworks — these are means. Delivery in the village is the end. Please remember that, every day of this Project. We will support you. We will protect you. We will reciprocate your commitment with our own. But we will not soften our expectations.
To Live & Learn Environmental Education team, and to all the regional and local service providers who will be engaged — the same applies. To the Pacific Community — vinaka — we look to you to ensure that the lessons we generate in Rabaul and Pomio do not stay in Rabaul and Pomio, but flow outwards across our Blue Pacific Continent.
To Our Brothers and Sisters in the Solomon Islands
This Programme is, by design, a partnership between two sovereign Melanesian nations. We share an ocean. We share a frontline against climate change. We share, frankly, the same painful statistics on rural water and sanitation. To the Government of the Solomon Islands, to the Ministry of Environment, Climate Change, Disaster Management and Meteorology, to the Ministry of Mines, Energy and Rural Electrification, and to the people of Guadalcanal, Makira and the Central Islands — wantok, we walk this road together. What works in Rabaul, we will share with Honiara. What works in Guadalcanal, we will adopt in Pomio. Our successes belong to the region.
Call to Action and Launch
Let me close with the same direct call to action that I issued at the launch of the Rabaul District WaSH Plan: move immediately from planning to performance; scale this model from Rabaul to every district in this nation; and deliver sustained, people-centred impact. The era of fragmented WaSH delivery in Papua New Guinea is over.
With the full authority vested in me by the Honourable Prime Minister James Marape, on behalf of the Marape–Rosso Government, on behalf of the people of Papua New Guinea, and in solidarity with our brothers and sisters of the Solomon Islands —
I now declare the PacFresH₂O Project — Protecting Freshwater, Increasing Resilience — nationally LAUNCHED in Papua New Guinea, beginning here, in Rabaul District, East New Britain.
Tenkyu tru. Mi tok tenkyu long yupela olgeta.
God bless the people of Rabaul, Pomio and East New Britain. God bless Papua New Guinea. God bless the Solomon Islands. God bless our partners. And God bless the Blue Pacific.
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HON. SIR ANO PALA, KBE, CMG, ISO, MP
Minister for National Planning, Independent State of Papua New Guinea
Rabaul, East New Britain | 11th May 2026
