Central Province is a

province A province is an administrative division within a country or sovereign state, state. The term derives from the ancient Roman , which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire, Roman Empire's territorial possessions ou ...

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean n ...

located on the southern coast of the country. It has a population of 237,016 (2010 census) people and is in size. The seat of government of Central Province, which is located within the National Capital District outside the province, is the

Port Moresby (; Tok Pisin: ''Pot Mosbi''), also referred to as Pom City or simply Moresby, is the capital and largest city of Papua New Guinea. It is one of the largest cities in the southwestern Pacific (along with Jayapura) outside of Australia and New ...

suburb of

Konedobu Konedobu is a suburb of Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and off ...

. On 9 October 2007, the Central Province government announced plans to build a new provincial capital city at Bautama, which lies within Central Province near Port Moresby, although there has been little progress in constructing it. Whereas

Tok Pisin Tok Pisin ( ,Laurie Bauer, 2007, ''The Linguistics Student's Handbook'', Edinburgh ; ), often referred to by English speakers as New Guinea Pidgin or simply Pidgin, is an English-based creole languages, English creole language spoken throughou ...

is the main

lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, link language or language of wider communication (LWC), is a Natural language, language systematically used to make co ...

in all Papua New Guinean towns, in part of the southern mainland coastal area centred on Central Province,

Hiri Motu Hiri Motu, also known as Police Motu, Pidgin Motu, or just Hiri, is a language of Papua New Guinea, which is spoken in surrounding areas of its capital city, Port Moresby. It is a simplified version of Motu, from the Austronesian language famil ...

is a stronger lingua franca (but not in Port Moresby).

Districts and LLGs

Each province in Papua New Guinea has one or more districts, and each district has one or more Local Level Government (LLG) areas. For

census A census (from Latin ''censere'', 'to assess') is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording, and calculating population information about the members of a given Statistical population, population, usually displayed in the form of stati ...

purposes, the LLG areas are subdivided into wards and those into census units.

Provincial leaders

The province was governed by a decentralised provincial administration, headed by a Premier, from 1976 to 1995. Following reforms taking effect that year, the national government reassumed some powers, and the role of Premier was replaced by a position of Governor, to be held by the winner of the province-wide seat in the

National Parliament of Papua New Guinea The National Parliament of Papua New Guinea is the Unicameralism, unicameral national legislature in Papua New Guinea. It was created in 1964 as the House of Assembly of Papua and New Guinea but gained its current name after the nation was grante ...

Premiers (1976–1995)

Governors (1995–present)

Members of the National Parliament

The province and each district is represented by a Member of the

National Parliament In modern politics and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...

. There is one provincial

electorate Electorate may refer to: * The people who are eligible to vote in an election, especially their number e.g. the term ''size of (the) electorate'' * The dominion of a prince-elector in the Holy Roman Empire until 1806 * An electoral district ...

and each district is an open electorate.

Notable people

* Julia Mage’au Gray (born 1973) - choreographer and tattoo artist.

Sources/further reading

* Hanson, L.W., Allen, B.J., Bourke, R.M. and McCarthy, T.J. (2001). Papua New Guinea Rural Development Handbook. Land Management Group, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University, Canberra. Available as
30 Megabyte PDF
.

References

{{Authority control Provinces of Papua New Guinea Southern Region, Papua New Guinea eo:Okcidenta Provinco (Papuo)