The National | Editorial | March 31st 2025
The Department of Implementation and Rural Development (DIRD) must be adequately funded so it can perform one of its key roles of inspection and monitoring projects in districts.
This department is very a very important role to play in supporting the Government deliver improved services to every province, districts and local level government throughout motoring the country.
It administers the Districts Services Improvement Programmed (DSIP) and Provincial Service Improvement Programmed (PSIP) which includes monitoring and inspection of projects, evaluating of acquittals and reports.
All these, however, can not be done as the department has no fund to send out officers.
DIRD officers together with fellow officers from National Planning and Monitoring department should be visiting the district to tick off on the report.
Take for instance, a school inspector has the responsibility of monitoring a teacher's performance.
The inspector visits the school, checks out the teacher's program, observers and rates them accordingly.
This then goes on the teacher's performance report for a promotion and appraisal at the end of the year.
The same applies for DIRD.
They monitor projects that are initiated by Members of Parliament that are funded through PSIP.
Each year, Government allocates millions in DSIP to district and provinces.
DIRD secretary Aihi Vaki says the department has no physical foresight of projects implement in 89 districts and 22 provinces due to limited financial capacities.
Vaki last week said the DIRD was unable to inspect projects implemented in districts and provinces in the country through the services improvement funds in the last 10 years.
The department is dependent on reports form districts development authorities and provincial administrators.
Since the funds are being distributed right down to the district level, the accountability process must be strident do auditing must also be done at the district level.
There must be compliance and monitoring of where these huge sums of money were spent and take stock of state properties such as machineries purchased under public funds (DSIP &PSIP).
Road must be built; electricity must be connected to villages and communities so that economic activities can take place so people's livelihood can transform.
The SIP is meant for funding development projects and services rural areas.
Every project acquitted in the SIP report should represent actual development on the ground.
Decentralization is a good Government policy whereby; provinces and districts have control over their development affairs.
But they should be responsible in providing statistics on all development that is taking place in respective centres.
Decentralization, helps provinces /districts to focus on their service delivery and know their development needs, issues, example, where the roads should cut through and water supply should be.
And with decentralization, it was not the responsibility of political leaders to deliver services. Instead, the responsibility lies with the administrators.
Provincial administrators and district development authorities (DDA) are the ones to provide the DIRD with a clear picture of the development occurring in the 89 districts and 22 provinces.
Provincial and district administrators are taking charge of schools, district and provincial roads, health fatalities and economic activities in the provinces and districts, thus acquittals must be submitted always on time.
Just receiving annual reports in Waigani will not tell you the real story.
Voters also have a right to check with their MPs and the public servants working in districts development authorities and provincial governments.
These are the people responsible for delivering goods and services.
The DIRD must be fully funded by the Government to inspect and monitor PSIP projects in the country to ensure funds are spent on what is intended for and not submitting fake or falsified report for compliance sake.