Profile of Western Highlanders
Our Leaders
Paul Pora
Mt Hagen
Paul Pora Schmidt was a Papua New Guinean businessman and politician who served as minister of finance between 1988 and 1992.
Pora was born at Tega Village, near Mount Hagen, in what is now the Western Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea. There is some confusion about his year of birth, with one source suggesting that it was 1946,[1] but it seems more likely that it was 1944. He was said to have been 66 when he died in 2010. Pora was the son of an Australian patrol officer, Dal (Dalkeith) Chambers, who was officer-in-charge at Mount Hagen, and of Rok, who came from the Yamuga tribe of that area. Because of World War II, Australians were required to leave New Guinea. Rok had been pregnant at the time. After the war, Chambers returned to search for his child but Pora was apparently hidden from him, his mother having subsequently married. The name of “Schmidt”, used by Pora, was apparently in honour of a Lutheran missionary who had taught him to read and write and not, as suggested by some, the name of his father.
Hon. Governor
Wai Rapa
A household name in Western Highlands Wai Rapa is a born leader. Live and breated politics prior to his elevation to the provinces highest polotical office
He was the Mt Hagen LLG president and also the chairman of Wamp Nga Group of Companies and a fine philanthrpoist in his own rights.
Pais
Wingti
Paias Wingti (born 2 February 1951) is a Papua New Guinean politician. He served as the third prime minister of Papua New Guinea between 1985 and 1988, and again from 1992 to 1994.
Wingti hails from the Jika Tribe of the Western Highlands province, and was born in Moika village, near Mount Hagen. He did not go to school until the age of 10, but was later educated at Mount Hagen High School. He enrolled at the University of Papua New Guinea in Port Moresby in 1974, and first visited Australia as an Australian Union of Students delegate for the UPNG Student Representative Council. While doing his final year in Economics at university, he contested the 1977 election, and won the Hagen Open seat, joining Michael Somare's Pangu Party.
