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Manager of K30m highway trust fund to take
the heat
By JAMES KILA
THE trustees of the controversial K30 million Sepik Highway trust funds
will be made personally accountable for any of the amount misused.
This is the thrust of the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee, which
is looking into the controversial highway project funding believed to
have been misused, according to panel member and Eastern Highlands
Governor Malcolm Kela-Smith.
Mr Kela-Smith revealed that the panel had already called on the former
Department of Finance secretary Thaddeus Kambanei and other trustees to
account for the use of the K30 million Sepik Highway trust fund.
“The revelation in the inquiry showed illegality, failure to keep
accounts, and failure to obey the Public Finance Management Act,” Mr
Kela-Smith said.
He said the inquiry had identified just one contract as being
legitimate.
“Accountability was so poor that there were no documents, records and
project assessments at all,” Mr Kela-Smith noted.
“If that was the standard of trustee management, we need immediate
action to make the trustees personally accountable and that is what the
PAC is aiming to do,” he said.
The governor said the trustees had been called on to account for their
actions, “a thing that they thought never would occur … and many did not
like it”.
Mr Kela-Smith was reacting to a statement from Mr Kambanei, who branded
some of the PAC member as being “one-term politicians who are ignorant
and irresponsible with intent on destroying his (Kambanei) reputation
built over 20 years”.
However, Mr Kela-Smith said there was only one reason that the
management of the Sepik trust account was being investigated and that
was to establish the source of the K30-million which passed through the
account, how the money was used, and the standard of trustee management
used by Mr Kambanei and other trustees.
Mr Kela-Smith said Mr Kambanei was a trustee and accountable to the
Government during the whole life of the account.
Mr Kila-Smith said in the last years of Sepik trust fund operations, he
(Mr Kambanei) was “the only signatory and trustee who managed the
account”.
 
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