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Sports |
Mind boggles at blatant corruption
ISN’T it amazing that we read on the
same day that the Prime Minister has closed down the inquiry into
the Finance Department that another Member of Parliament walked
away with K2 million from the very same department!
This is despite the fact that the Ombudsman has given warnings
about issuance of cheques to candidates and MPs.
The Chief Secretary is supposed to have also issued a similar ban
and yet no one takes any notice.
Can’t the public servants in the department read or is it that
they simply don’t care because they believe that nothing is going
to happen if they break the law?
We are almost at the end of an election campaign that is supposed
to be about the future of the country, about how to get better
services to the people and halt the disastrous decline in PNG’s
human development indicators.
Yet the corruption just gets more and more blatant, so-called
leaders seem to think it is their right to steal and cheat at
every turn.
In the meantime, young children and mothers die at health centres
and aid posts, we can’t look after Angau hospital after all these
years of neglect and political leaders merrily campaign around Lae
as if everything is in good shape.
At the same time the Prime Minister halts the inquiry into the
place where it has already been reported that hundreds of millions
of kina had been paid out to people, who had no just claim other
than a deal with some sleazy public servant.
It is to be hoped that every voting Papua New Guinean is reading
this and determining that the people they elect in the next couple
of weeks will be honest; that candidates will make a real effort
to stamp out this corruption and they will make a real effort to
provide health and education services for their people.
We have no one to blame but ourselves if we simply vote for the
person who offers some sort of bribe, or is our wantok, or our
relatives tell us to vote for and that person turns out to ignore
the needs of our communities.
We have no one to blame if the person we vote for steals the money
that should go to provide services in our villages.
Use your vote wisely Papua New Guinea and make your vote against
corruption.
MJ Manning
Chairman,
Transparency
International (PNG) Inc
 
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