Juffa calls for sacking of Minister Justin Tkatchenko

Oro Governor Gary Juffa has challenged Prime Minister Peter O’Neill to sack his APEC Minister for misleading the public about the cost of running the APEC meeting in 2018.
Juffa was responding to a statement in the National Newspaper of Monday 24, October 2016 in which Mr O’Neill has claimed the opposition was ‘politicizing’ the APEC meet.
Juffa said he quoted the Sports Minister and Minister responsible for APEC Justin Tkatchenko who informed the media earlier that the budget for APEC in 2017 would be K600 million.
“That figure came from the APEC minister and I only reiterated that such money was too much when there are very important issues in the country that needed immediate funding,” he said.
Juffa said if the Prime Minister though he plugged the figure out of thin air, he should sit back and think again and ask his APEC minister where he got the figure or even sack him for inflating the figure and misleading the people of this country.

However, Juffa said he was not against the staging of the APEC meet adding there was no issue with the opposition regarding the APEC meeting.

The Prime Minister should not play blame game every time there are issues of check and balance brought up by politicians or individuals for the interest of the people and the country.
He said the country has the right to know how much of their money is being spent on such major events and whether the people would benefit out of such events.
“We cannot pretend that we are ok by staging international events that costs a lot of money when our people do not have access to basic services. We just need to empower our people to be self-reliant and are able to stand tall as a nation before we talk about major issues of international significance,” he said.

Prime Minister Peter O’Neill however said the budget for the APEC in 2017 will be significantly less than the false K600 million that the opposition has taken out of thin air.
He said figures are being through by a budget team and would be further revised for the 2018 budget.