By Eddie Tanago Paine | ACT NOW!

The government has approved a total of K1.165 billion in El Niño relief funding to districts and provincial governments.

A total of K500 million comes from a supplementary budget and another K665 million will be reallocated from the District Support Improvement Program (DSIP). 

According to media reports, K304 million has been immediately released to give K2.5 million to each of the 96 districts and 22 provinces.

Some provinces have already reported receipt of these funds and have started relief assistance while others have not indicated whether they have received funding or not. 

There is currently a call from the Prime Minister, minister responsible and even citizens for districts to spend the monies wisely and publish their acquittals.

However, the reality is there is very little likelihood that this will ever happen as the current District Development Authority transparency and accountability blackhole revealed in the 2026 DDA Watch Website Report clearly shows.

The Report reveals, DDAs are operating in secrecy with zero visibility of five- year development plans, district budgets, acquittals and audit reports, contact details and many other key documents.

The analysis shows that four years into the current parliamentary term, transparency among the nation’s 96 DDAs has hit a terminal low. 

Despite the annual allocation of K20 million per district—representing a staggering K2 billion in public wealth managed at the local level this year alone—the national average transparency score has stalled at a dismal 18 out of 100.

This is not merely a failure of administration; it is a systemic blackout. 

The main findings of the 2026 DDA Watch Website Report are:

• Only 37 out of 96 DDAs seem to have a five-year development plan for 2022-2027.
• Just 12 DDAs have a five-year plan that is publicly available
• Only 1 DDA has published its annual budget and only 1 has published an acquittal report.
• No DIRD inspection reports and no financial audits for any DDA are publicly available
• Just 8 DDAs have a public email address
• Only 13 DDAs have a public phone number
• Only 20 DDAs have a public mailing address
• The highest ranking DDA has a score of 67 out of 100
• The lowest raking DDAs, 15 in total, have a score of zero.
• Only 5 DDAs have a score of 50 or above.
• The average DDA score is just 18 out of 100.
• The best performing Provinces are West New Britain and Western, with average DDA scores of 35 and 33 respectively
• The worst performing Provinces are Milne Bay, with an DDA average score of 5, and East New Britain and Hela with an average score of 8
• Regionally, there is no statistical difference in the performance of the DDAs. The average DDA score in each Region ranges from 16 - 18.

The whole country is affected by natural disaster and our districts should be focused on serving citizens transparently and fairly and not use disaster resources to lure votes or serve their voter base. It is not time for playing politics at the expanse of the suffering citizens.

Citizens must call and demand their districts to be more transparent in delivering services to them in these dire times.

The 2026 DDA Watch Website Report can be accessed using thishttps://ddawatch.gn.apc.org/sites/default/files/2026-10/DDA%20Watch%20Report%20July%202026.pdf