HCC Lord Mayor Israel Maeoli top list is increase of pay

The newly elected City Council Executive has unwrapped its initial priority areas of focus.
Lord Mayor Israel Maeoli said key aims to start with are to address the structure within its own House and to uphold the general cleanliness of the Honiara City.

The Council took office last month after the election of a new Mayor Mr Maeoli.

Mr Maeoli said that his executive is currently working on an establishment plan to raise the salaries of city council employees.

He said that once this problem is addressed then we can move on to the next area of development that we need to addressed.

“Because none of the previous councils has addressed this problem and employees of this council has been suffering poor living standards over the years which go beyond humanitarian grounds.

“So this is the first area we are trying to address so that it can help employees of the council to fully concentrate on our development plans for the city”, he said.

He said the second priority area is to encourage the rapid employment scheme and maintain the cleanliness of the city.

“Our next priority is to uphold the general cleanliness of the city and that will also generate income for people living in the city as it will be funded by the World Bank under its Development Project Scheme for Solomon Islands” Mr Maeoli said.

This project is targeting infrastructure development in the Solomon Islands and Honiara is one of the areas targetted by the project.

Deputy Lord Mayor and Chairman for Education Mr Erick Tema also supported the scheme.

“We have seen this aid scheme as an employment opportunity for the people in and around Honiara City.

“Unemployed youths particularly will get involve in maintenance work of our city and communities around Honiara which they will get paid for it.

The Rapid Employment scheme, recently saw the maintenance of roads, bridges, drainage and other infrastructure within the city by many youths.

The Mayor said the project is an ongoing one.

“The World Bank Project will last for five years starting this year and it will continue to be extended after then, if there is a positive feedback on the project.

“We hope that such development project like this will maintain good relationship between us and aid donors to help in other aspects of development that we need to address”, he said.

Maeoli said they will later look at other areas that need to improve like health services and education.

Source: Solomon star.com