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Caretaker Government in Place

By GORETHY KENNETH



PAPUA New Guineans will know who their Deputy Prime Minister will be when Prime Minister Peter O’Neill announces his full Cabinet on Wednesday.
Prime Minister O’Neill yesterday named his caretaker Cabinet at the Grand Papua Hotel in Port Moresby yesterday which was also officially gazetted.
  He also announced that the Government is now bracing for the National Budget Session coming up in November, which will now be the full responsibility of the Cabinet once named this Wednesday.  
Mr O’Neill will look after National Planning and Police until new Ministers are appointed and announced on Wednesday.


“Deputy Prime Minister will be announced on Wednesday. There are no negotiations going on in the deputy prime minister, it’s already decided. You will be pleasantly surprised,” Mr O’Neill said.


Below is the line up:


* Don Pomb Polye - Treasury and Finance, Correctional Services, Labour, Industrial Relations, Immigration and Transport


* Patrick Pruaitch – Housing, Urban, Provincial and Local Level Government and Forest


* William Duma – Petroleum and Energy, Defence, Tourism and Art Culture and Autonomy and Autonomous Region (Bougainville Affairs) 


* Sir Puka Temu - Public Service, Agriculture and Live stock, Foreign Affairs and Trade


* James Marape-Works, Implementation, Lands and Physical Planning, Education, Research and Science and Technology 


* Charles Abel, Commerce and Industry, Small Medium Enterprise (SMEs), Justice and Attorney General, Communication, Information and Technology


* Mao Zeming – Fisheries, Marine Resource, Health, HIV Aids, Family Affairs , Youth Religion and Gender


* Ben Micah –Public Enterprises, Sports and Pacific Game and Mining


* John Pundari-Environment, Climate change and Civil Aviation 


“These are basically the ministers that are going to look after the ministries over the next two days and of course, they will be re-distributed again on Wednesday to respective ministers as we finalise the discussions. So with these announcements I am pleased to announce that I am now signing these papers,” Mr O’Neill said.


“We are now structuring the government before we can start the work. We have spent three months in the election process and that process has taken too long but we have now come to an end…


“The Budget session coming up in November- we don’t have time to go through and delay any further formation of this government we want the ministers to participate fully in the formation of that budget and also have some very good number of legislative programs and legislations that we want to introduce in August so that is why I am pleased to announced that these are the main responsibilities that I have put forward,” he said.