Regions
On a broader scale, the nation is divided into four regions. These regional groupings are quite significant in daily life, as they are often the basis for organisation of government services, corporate operations, sporting competitions, and even the machinations of politics. For instance, there has been much discussion over the years of how many Prime Ministers have come from each region, and whether a particular region is due to provide the next one. Ministers and departmental heads are often appointed with an eye to maintaining an overall balance between the regions.
People generally identify quite strongly with their region, and inter-region rivalries can be intense. The four regions are:
- Highlands Region: Simbu, Eastern Highlands, Enga, Hela, Jiwaka, Southern Highlands, and Western Highlands.
- Islands Region: East New Britain, Manus, New Ireland, Bougainville (North Solomons), and West New Britain.
- Momase Region: East Sepik, Madang, Morobe, and West Sepik (Sandaun).
- Papua Region: Central, Gulf, Milne Bay, Northern Province (Oro), Western (Fly), and the National Capital District.
Momase is a recently devised portmanteau word which combines the first two letters of Morobe, Madang, and Sepik.
Read more about this topic: Provinces Of Papua New Guinea
Famous quotes containing the word regions:
“We have wasted our spirit in the regions of the abstract and general just as the monks let it wither in the world of prayer and contemplation.”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“In place of a world, there is a city, a point, in which the whole life of broad regions is collecting while the rest dries up. In place of a type-true people, born of and grown on the soil, there is a new sort of nomad, cohering unstably in fluid masses, the parasitical city dweller, traditionless, utterly matter-of-fact, religionless, clever, unfruitful, deeply contemptuous of the countryman and especially that highest form of countryman, the country gentleman.”
—Oswald Spengler (1880–1936)
“What is a television apparatus to man, who has only to shut his eyes to see the most inaccessible regions of the seen and the never seen, who has only to imagine in order to pierce through walls and cause all the planetary Baghdads of his dreams to rise from the dust.”
—Salvador Dali (1904–1989)