Representatives from Koror State Planning Commission, Koror State Governor’s Office, Koror State Legislature, Public Lands Authority, Palau Housing Authority, Chamber of Commerce and United Nations attended the workshops on Thursday and Friday.
The workshops tackled about planning initiatives, planning tools, sustainable land management and the social and environmental challenges and how the Koror Planning Commission addressed each challenges.
Koror Planning Commission Chairman John Wong said the objective of the workshop is to come up with better plans in terms of land use for Koror developments.
“The workshop is very informative, it went well and hopefully we can come up with better plans, hopefully adopt those plans and implement those plans for the development of Koror State,” Wong said in an interview on Friday after the workshop.
Maggy Antonio, Executive Officer for Koror Planning Commission in a separate interview said that they need to upgrade some master plans because most of the plan is already outdated.
“Our goal is to work with other agencies to implement the master plan with regards to developments such as infrastructure projects, buildings and business establishments in Koror.”
“We have seen other things to improve our plans and what we can do so we can move forward in the planning aspects. We have now better understanding of what other agencies are doing and all we need to do is coordinate with them in terms of planning,” Antonio said.
Two representatives from United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific and UN Habitat shared information to Palau participants about planning and developments in the Pacific Islands.
Alastair J. Wilkinson, Regional Advisor for Social Development and Planning for United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific gave programme overview and the role of the Planning
Commission in the developments of the State while Sarah Mecartney, Pacific Programme Manager of UN Habitat talked about Urban and Urbanization.
Wilkinson in an interview said that participants should take planning seriously and to develop policy and identify its priorities.
He said for two days they had good discussion with the participants.
“We had a very good debate and I think the Koror state had a good grasp of the issues and one of the arguments from the UN side is that planning is not just about physical land use of management but also the whole community. We need to involve the community as well and to ensure that we also have the central government on our side,” Wilkinson said.
Mecartney said among the issues that were brought up were the access to lands, affordable housing, economic development and how to encourage investment.
“But the positive aspect of it is that there was serious address of how to get ahead and acknowledging the challenges,” Mecartney said.
