Editorial | The National 

THE Constitutional and Law Reform Commission (CLRC) has announced that consultations over a review of the laws on district development authorities (DDA) are expected to start soon.

As the mandated agency tasked to review and reforms laws in Papua New Guinea, the CLRC is expected to identify the necessary legislative and policy reforms that would address the various legal social and economic issues to the implementation of the roles and responsible of DDAs.

The CLRC ought to be applauded and supported for this initiative as many have seen DDAs used and abused since its inception more than a decade ago.

The introduction of the DDA Act of 2014 was the third comprehensive reform on decentralisation and sub-national government in PNG. Unlike the former reforms, the DDA arrangement is directly funding the districts, which is intended to bypass much of the bureaucratic red tape.

In the process, however, the DDA Act has introduced an entity that is unplanned in the constitutional arrangement of sub-national government hierarchy.

Section 5 of the DDA Act states that its functions are to:

• PERFORM service delivery functions and carry out service delivery responsibilities specified in the ministerial determination made under Section 6;
• DEVELOP, build, repair, improve and maintain roads and other infrastructure;
• APPROVE the disbursement of district support grants and other grants;
• OVERSEE, coordinate and make recommendations as to the overall district planning, including budget priorities, for consideration by the provincial government and the national government;
• DETERMINE and control the budget allocation priorities for the local level governments (LLG) in the district;
• APPROVE the LLG budgets for presentation to the LLG and to make recommendations concerning them;
• DRAW up a rolling five-year development plan and annual estimates for the district;
• CONDUCT annual reviews of the rolling five-year development plan; and,
• SUCH other functions as are prescribed by the regulation.

However, service delivery continues to be a challenge in most parts of the country despite a substantial amount of funds being passed through DDAs.

Most of the 96 Open MPs, who sit as their DDA chairman, will tell a different story.

Some have said their district has not been fully funded, while others say funding has been delayed even when it is needed the most, with most appropriations postponed to near the end of the financial year.

And while the level of funding remains a cause for concern, mismanagement of these funds is just as worrying, given the cases of negligent use of public funds in districts.

This is largely due to the fact that at the district level, there is a lack of qualified officers to plan, budget, implement and report on projects, while at the national level, the implementation of the DDA is not effectively monitored.

Even the composition and influence of the DDA board can potentially deny the people’s stake in the decision-making processes.

The board meetings also need to be questioned, as Section 28 (1) of the DDA Act states that “all meetings of a board shall be open to the public”.

Section 34 also requires that a DDAs annual report be submitted to the minister responsible before March 31 of the following year.

In Parliament on June 5, Prime Minister James Marape said the Government has provided about K6.4 billion in capital investment funding through the services improvement programme (SIP) to all 22 provinces and 96 districts since 2019.

Marape said: “Total district services improvement programme (DSIP) and provincial services improvement programme (PSIP) payments between 2019 and 2025 amounted to about K6.4 billion, with annual allocations peaking at K960 million in both 2022 and 2025.”

PSIP funds are paid to the provincial treasury and distributed at the discretion of the governor, while DSIP funds are to the district treasuries and distributed by the Open MP.

This gives citizens the right to hold their elected officials to account on how these funds are spent if services are not delivered to them.

Therefore, the CLRC review must be a comprehensive examination of the legal, institutional and administrative framework governing DDAs to ensure these structures continue to serve the interests of the people effectively, responsibly and accountably.