AT age 34, Jimmy Daoni is now a politician.
JIMMY Daoni is one of the 33 elected Member of Provincial Assembly (MPA) representing Ward 10 in Malaita Province.
He won the election on 12th June, 2019 with a majority of 307 votes while his runner up polled 304 votes.
However to win an election is not easy for a young school dropout like Daoni who has spent most of his time in the village after living school.
Mr Daoni is a Form Six leaver at Selwyn College, in West Guadalcanal.
After his attempt to further his studies faded, he went back home in 2009.
Without wasting too much of his time, he ventured into farming to raise income to put food on the table for his family.
Besides farming, he builds and operates a canteen Business at his home village, to support his farming activity and also community members not to travel far distance to buy basic household items.
After some years of hard work, Daoni’s business expands and grows to a level where people at his community started to build trust, respect and recognition on him.
The recognition has attracted the National Provident Fund (NPF) YOU SAVE scheme to engage Mr Daoni as a local agent in the Lau/Mbaelelea Constituency.
With that, he is also an agent for ANZ mobile banking (go-money) service that provides banking service for ANZ customers in the Lau and Mbaelelea group.
Mr Daoni believes that the honesty in him and the commitment of providing services at his community has prepared people to recognise and support him during his election campaign.
“I believe honesty is a key factor that motivates people to recognize and vote me to be their MPA in this new government.”
He said that Ward 10 is located at a remote part in Malaita province.
Daoni expressed that economic activities in Ward 10 is very diminutive, where farmers experience difficulties to trade their product to urban centre.
He also said that there are many issues that needs to be addressed; however it needs collaboration of his colleague MPAs and community leaders in Ward 10.
Mr Daoni said he will influence the provincial government to recognise the need for economic activities to go down to the northern region by implementing the national projects earmarked for Malaita province.
Adding to that, he expressed that since communities in his ward still lacked proper water and sanitation.
“I will try as much as possible to address the issue by working together with community leaders, government and Non-Government organization.
“Creating a market opportunity and accessibility for local farmers is among my plans for the next four years,” the MPA added.
He explains that Farmers at ward 10 are experiencing difficulties over the years to trade their products to economical sites.
“However, sadly due to lack of accessibility and uneconomical activity in rural area we were left out.”
Meanwhile, the priority areas that Mr Daoni plans to look into are Clinic, Market opportunity, education and health.
He assured that these could happen if communities and leaders in both national, and provincial government work together to address the need of people not only in Ward 10 but Malaita province as whole.
Mr Daoni called on his colleague MPA to work together to serve the province and people with decisions that display fairness of resources distribution among Malaitans.
“I call on my colleague MPAs to work together with each other to serve our people with decision that will be made in government policy.” Mr Daoni said.
By SOLOMON LOFANA
In Auki
