Welcome

Hi this first post is to give a general breif introduction to this project. Please click the highlghted & underlined links in the paragraphs below for more information

The East New Britain Province consists of 4 main districts, the kokopo, gazelle, pomio, and rabaul districts. Many refer to anyone from Rabaul as a iouro or tolai person. But their is another group of people called the Baining People famous for their fire dances.

Most Baining people are found in the pomio and gazelle districts. These two districts out of the four districts of east new britain are less developed and have little to no government services. Theay also are located in remote areas of the province.

One such area where the baining people reside is the Lassul Bay area of the Inland Baining LLG of the Gazelle District. This bay is very important as it has a health centre that services the needs of many baining people who live along the north coasts of the Gazelle Peninsula.

This health center was built many years ago and consists of one main run down building servicing a huge population. For many bainings this is the nearest health facility that they can access mainly by foot and sea.

With the increasing population their needs to be better health facilities build to make accesable to these people as other main health facilities are far away in kerevat, rabaul, and kokopo. Another reason why there needs to be better health facilities is to cater for the scaling down of the Existing Nonga Base General Hospital in Rabaul as it is planned to be relocated because of continuous ash fall from Tavurvur volcano in the Rabaul area.

Because of the two reasons above the National Department of Health and the Gazelle District have given funding for the Construction of Additional Facilities at the Lassul Bay Health Centre.

The Gazelle Restoration Authority - Project Implementation Unit will be supervising the Contractor who has been awarded the contract "Southern Enterprises Ltd".

This blog will follow progress of the construction works from start to finish in the middle of next year. Information publicized by the GRA-PIU will be used.

Well the first first thing I am doing on this project is going on a site visit (Tuesday 27.10,09) with the contractor to the site. The Lassul Bay Health Centre is a 3 hours trip by road and sea from kokopo. Below are photos of our trip today. We went by road from Kokopo to Lungalunga Basis Point, took a fiberglass dinghy risde to Lassul bay and returned the same way.

Hoping on a dinghy at Basis Point, Lungalunga, Atliklikun Bay

Going past Vunamarita Plantation

Entering Lassul Bay

Arriving at the existing Health Centre at Lassul LLG area

Three pics of the existing health centre building

Below are pics of other existing government buildings and infrastructure

LLG office room

old broken down concrete jetty

Nice beach at Lassul with clear water

Now after our visit today we had one big question, can we travel by road direct from kokopo to Lassul??? Instead of going by road and then get on a dinghy and go to lassul?? This is a major question that needs to be answered because it would be cheaper to bring some construction materials by road.

We asked the locals and they said there is a road and that it is ok fro 4WD cars only. The road comes from Kerevat, past vudal Agricultural Uni, past Utmei Secondry School, past Mandress, past Ramandu, Past Wara Pukpuk, Past Clean Wara, past.........i dont know. We have to travel the road to find out.

Check this blog again to see if we can travel by road direct kokopo to Lassul.