PNG government hailed for promoting education

Papua New Guinea has received praise for promoting education through the tuition fee-free programmme for schools.
Japanese Ambassador Satoshi Nakajima said he was “very impressed that the PNG government has been making an effort to make primary education available to all school-aged children in the country
by adopting the tuition fee-free policy”.
“I congratulate PNG for attaining a 40 per cent increase in the enrolment rate for primary education in 2013 and for maintaining a steady increase since 2012,” Nakajami said at the signing of a grants agreement for the construction of classrooms and water supply systems for four schools.
He said Japan was helping strengthen education in PNG through infrastructural development under its grant assistance for grassroots human security projects (GGP)
Nakajima said Japan had been providing economic aid to PNG since 1974, but the projects back then were mainly large-scale, ranging from
K3 million to about K280 million.
In a statement, the Japanese Embassy said Japan’s small-scale grant assistance programme was introduced in 1989. In 1996, it became the grant assistance for grassroots projects, and in 2003 it turned into the grant assistance for grassroots human security projects.