The National | Editorial | 2nd October 2025

AS PNG begins its next set of 50 years, adjustments, reviews and structural changes must be made to those laws, policies, systems, processes and institutions that have been found wanting in the first half century of independence.

One of them must be the District Development Authority.

In the first instance it is a legal anomaly, an aberration of sorts. 

Of the three-tier government in place – national, provincial and local level governments, the DDA sits at a fourth tier packed somewhere between the second and the third and feeding directly off the first.

This is the creature Parliament created on Nov 24, 2014.

Despite the awkward placement, placed at its’ feet are such powers and responsibilities that basically usurp and make powerless the Provincial and Local Government system of government.

Yet these two previous bodies are allowed to coexist primarily because they are creatures of the Constitution (Organic Law on Provincial and Local Level Governments and no ordinary Act of Parliament (such as the DDA Act) can usurp or nullify a Constitutional Law.

The fact of their coexistence presents no small amount of problems, especially at the coordination, procurement, and command levels.

This law for the first time inserts the politician directly into the command, control, procurement and supply line of the goods and services delivery process.

Hitherto, the politician was a figurehead, a policy maker who directed the flow of policy and programme from a distance, an interested party who was hands-off in the work of the public servant.

The District Development Authority Act made the Member of Parliament for each Open Electorate (all 21 of them) the head of the operation at the district level, as chairman of the Authority, no less.

The DDA was the brainchild of Prime Minister at the time, Peter O’Neill and his Chief Secretary, Sir Manasupe Zurenuoc (now deceased).

It grew out of the general frustration at the lack of goods and services delivery at the district level.

Such frustrations had led first to the abandonment of the Organic Law on Provincial and Local Level Government in 1995 at its 19th year of operation. 

The replacement, the Organic Law on Provincial and Local Level Governments, was and continues to be an unwieldy and half-baked piece of law that required so many amendments across the years it is hardly recognisable in its original form.

Further, it created a disturbance in the cohesion of national and sub- national legal arrangements by creating an unelected legislature at the provincial level with only one elected member as its head called the governor, effectively making him assume total powers as head of both the executive and the legislature at this important second tier government.

That is for another telling but the sum of this is that the DDA was the second creature summoned into being by the National Parliament that was well-intentioned but which caused a serious disturbance to the legal and administrative structure in place in the country.

Part III of the DDA Act provides for the establishment of a board for each authority.

The functions of the board of an authority are:

a) to ensure the proper, efficient and economical performance of the Authority’s operations for the benefit of the people of the district; and,

b)  to give directions to the Chief Executive Officer; and, 

(c) such other functions as are conferred on the Board by or under this Act.

Further, the District Development Authority board ‘has the power to do all things necessary or convenient to be done for or in connection with the performance of its functions’.

The membership of the Board shall consist of the following members: 

a) the Member of Parliament representing the open electorate who shall be the chairperson of the Board; and

b)  the heads of local level governments in the district; and 

c) not more than three other members appointed by the Member of the Parliament representing the open electorate.

Where the office of the Member of the Parliament representing the open electorate becomes vacant, the members of the Board shall elect the head of a local level government in the district to act as the chairperson of the board until the office of the Member of the Parliament representing the open electorate is occupied.

The Salaries and Conditions Monitoring Committee shall provide advice to the Minister on the remuneration, sitting fees and allowances to be paid to members of a board and the proposed remuneration, sitting fees and allowances shall not exceed the remuneration, sitting fees and allowances payable to members of a Provincial Assembly.

The Member of the Parliament representing the open electorate may terminate the appointment of an appointed member by notice in writing to the member if the Member of Parliament is satisfied that: (a) it is not in the best interest of the Authority for the appointed member to continue in office.

It can be seen from this that the MP has absolute control of the district development authority and its priorities and since the member votes for how much the DDA gets or whether or not it continues to operate, it can be safely determined that Parliament will never kill or alter the nature of this creature.

Why would the creator jeopardies a creation that benefits them immensely?

And here is where the nation’s scarce finances get sluiced down a wide-open pit with negligible gain.