The Governor of Papua New Guinea's Enga Province says public servants need to take ownership of state-funded projects if basic service delivery is to improve throughout the country.
Peter Ipatas was reflecting on recent gains in public service performance in Enga, especially in education.
He says there is still much room for improvement in the public sector in his province and nation-wide given the lack of skills and commitment to the job.
"Across the board in PNG there is a lack of ownership and commitment to deliver by public servants. We need to give more training to our public servants basically. And we need to be honest with ourselves as leaders and public servants, and all have to own up, because at the end of the day we all work for the public, that's the people of the country."
Peter Ipatas says the need to ensure public servants are properly housed is more critical than ever, with the recent failure of a major national Public Service Housing project.
