NO POLITICS IN PARADISE

China has no part in Mamara project: Ling

BY PETER ZOLEVEKE II

The Metropolis Mamara Development Limited has no link with the Chinese government and is a ‘private company’, says General Manager William Ling this week.

Ling was responding to criticisms raised especially through the social media that the company was funded by the Chinese government.

“Our company here is locally registered. From outside, a lot of people said the project is China funded which is not true! I want to clarify here that we are a private company,” Ling reiterated.

He revealed that there are five investors funding the groundbreaking project.

“The investors for this project funding are from various countries and are private investors not affiliated to any government or politically influenced. We are purely private.

“The owners of MMDL are from Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and China. We have five investors from these countries,” he said.

“Only the workers are from China. Why we get workers from China is because of the technology and materials they are bringing in. Only Chinese people know how to use such materials for the project.”

Ling also highlighted that as the project develops through various stages more locals will get direct employment.

“Not only are we bringing in people from China, currently working on the project are 66 expatriates consisting those from China, Malaysia and also the Philippines.

“But on the ground, we employed more than 110 locals and the numbers are increasing.”

“So, the manpower for this project is to get 180 expatriates together with 800 locals, this is the whole idea.”

The MTMD project was a long-established agreement 25 years ago with the national government.

“The company developing this area is under the company’s agreement with the Solomon Islands government, namely the Mamara- Tasivarongo- Mavo Development (MTMD) Act signed by the government in 1995.

“The question is why in the past years we did not do any development, because during then we hardly got interest and genuine investors,” Ling admitted.

“Because of the land issue and luck of support from the past government for water and power supply the project was delayed.

“This time we are different. We have our partners and investors coming on board and as of today the government is supportive towards the development.

“We are now in the first phase of development where we are going to build 1,184 houses mainly for government’s public servants. Also we will open up to the general public for interested buyers. We will build three different types of houses

There are three different designs of residential building planned for the project; 368 units of Type A, each unit covers an approximate land area of 255 square meter. 310 units of Type, each unit covers an approximate land area of 202.5 square meter and 506 units of Type C, each unit covers an approximate land area of 150 square meters.

Ling also revealed that 15 Type B houses have reached its completion and will double the number in the next phase.

Meanwhile, the ground-breaking ceremony of the Mamara City project is scheduled for Friday April 29  to be attended by Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare as the guest of honour.