PNG to host 3000 delegates for first Senior Officials Meeting

More than 3000 delegates have been confirmed to attend the first Senior Officials Meeting (SOM 1) in Port Moresby nine days from now.
The SOM 1 is the biggest of the four cluster meetings that will be hosted by PNG during this APEC year.
PNG APEC Ambassador Ivan Pomaleu told members and non members of the Port Moresby Chamber of Commerce and Industry during an APEC briefing in Port Moresby yesterday.
Mr Pomaleu said it will take the committee 36 to 48 hours per day to host 78 of those meetings, peaking 8 meetings per day at four different locations, and that entails a massive coordinating effort between the policy teams, the security teams, and logistics teams.
“In 10 days we will host the SOM 1 cluster meetings commencing from February 24 to March 9, that will entail 78 meetings running parallel over the 14 days of the meetings, with more than 3000 delegates rotating through the 14 days of meetings.
“Meaning we would have a peak of eight meetings running all at the same time at the Stanley Hotel and Suites (the main venue), Laguna, Lamana and Gateway,” he said.
Mr Pomaleu said they have already scheduled the meetings that will run for the two weeks and have also allocated rooms with officials ready to deploy these meetings next Saturday. He said they are also wrapping up all the agenda papers for all the 78 meetings.
“We’ve agreed that most of the papers that need to go in and there are processes that need to be followed in terms of ensuring that the agenda papers are circulated well in advance so we all have to follow some of the expectations of making sure that the documents are circulated and ready for the meetings.
“It’s an incredible effort that we are putting together over the last couple of months since December, the teams in the secretariat and the logistics areas … we’ve been working flat out to coordinate different inputs.
“ We’ve got international support from Australia, New Zealand, Japan, US, China, Indonesia and Canada. Support is coming through in the form of security assistance, both in terms of advisory as well as deployment of high end equipment and personnel,” Mr Pomaleu said. Press Release/PostCourier/PNG Today