The National | Editorial
THERE was a conversation in the office of Dennis Young, then Speaker of the National Parliament in around 1991, that a fly on the wall has passed on to us.
In attendance were Young and Ialibu Pangia MP Roy Yaki and Wewak MP Bernard Narokobi.
The latter two had a proposal they wanted the Speaker’s blessing on.
The proposal was that Parliament ought to pass legislation to ensure that Memberss electoral development funds, going at the time at K250,000 per member, was entrenched in law.
Young, with prophetic insight, told the duo that protecting electoral development funds in law would perpetuate it and with slight amendments, it would only ever increase with the result that members would only be thinking about their electorates and lose sight of their duty to the nation.
He told Yaki and Narokobi that the increasing amounts would never be enough and because it would be even per district, the effect of it would always be disproportionate in terms of population size and geographical location.
Young’s foresight has now come to pass.
The amount of District Services Improvement Program (DSIP) and its provincial component (PSIP) has increased to over K10 million per district and K5 million per district per province.
These while not entrenched specifically in law, have the protection of the appropriation bill as they are now intrinsic components of the budget.
The District Development Authority Act provides for their distribution at the district level and the amounts have been forever increasing.
Under the O’Neill administration, the amounts were K10 million per district (DSIP)and K5 million per district per province (PSIP).
A proposal has been advanced under the Marape administration to increase that amount to K20 million per district and it is possibly being implemented already.
There is no oversight on the allocation of these amounts now because Treasury releases them on a certain criterion that the Opposition accuses is wildly lopsided and tilted in favor of Government MPs.
It is no wonder that members wander into the Opposition to support a motion of no confidence and after it is defeated or aborted on technicality, it is back to the Government benches they go. The greatest lure is of course DSIP and PSIP.
And there are other funds that are available to the member of Parliament in many departmental allocations. Minor transport programme funds is one.
Agricultural funding is another and so is health and education.
The entire government system is leaky with money being sluiced off through politicians into all manner of programs and projects.
Yet, there has been no reported presented to Parliament by a single district or province accounting for use of the public funds.
The Attorney-General has admitted that it lacks the capacity to audit all district funds.
In a selection of a few districts that the AG was able to audit, it found staggering evidence of lack of transparency and accountability.
The entire public service is now politicized.
The public servant is more concerned with protecting his political master than providing service to the people as is his or her responsibility.
Prime Minister James Marape has admitted that K214 billion has been squandered in the last 12 years with K133 billion under his watch from 2019.
The Prime Minister is a brave soul for admitting that. Now, he must follow up his admission with action.
All department and agency heads must be called to account for their actions in the past six years.
What key performance indicators have they delivered?
The top echelon of the public service is on performance based contracts.
That means, their engagement is conditional upon performance.
If they have not performed they must ship out.
If over 130 billion of public funds has been wasted, it stands to reason to expect heads to roll.
It is also time to protect public funding and to ensure that money that is being directed into political channels are redirected through the checks and balances of the public service delivery machinery.