Kolombangara Island…the sleeping lady was featured in the recent ABC Four Corners program on Solomon Islands, highlighting Chinese ambitions to acquire logging rights, an old airstrip and the deep-water port. This is a very strategically important location.
So began the recent address by Partner Housing President Rod Johnston to the Association of Consulting Structural Engineers NSW awards night.
Kolombangara dominates the surrounding islands, the region where Partner Housing has been building village water and sanitation infrastructure for the last 13 years, thus boosting safe access to reticulated rural water to the highest level in the western region. Partner Housing is the only Australian NGO building both village water supplies in the Solomon Islands Western Province and health buildings, school buildings and housing in the Papua New Guinea Highlands.
Despite this impressive track record of practical design and construction of infrastructure in remote villages, Partner Housing does not receive on-going funding from the Australian Government.
So … when the sleeping lady finally awakens, who will be by her side providing on-going support?
Will it be Partner Housing with Australian Government funding … or will it be some other country?
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