Acquittal vital in service delivery

GOVERNMENTS over time have disbursed a huge amount of money for provinces and districts, however there is inadequate capacity at the district level to manage these large amounts of public funds allocated to the districts.
And that is the biggest problem we now have on the ground – building the capacity of the districts to implement the public funds allocated to them successfully.
Acquitting a grant means accurately reporting on the funded activities and the expenditure of funding.
Grant reports – providing artistic and financial information – are required on completion of your project.
Low levels of accountability and transparency further undermine good governance. This is reflected in insufficient capacities to administer and account for public funds, as well as insufficient awareness by the general public about roles, responsibilities, and functioning of these institutions to hold them accountable in an effective manner.
And that is the challenge too for some of our members to parliament, to get into the habit of acquitting public funds.
It is important that all the funds allocated are properly acquitted.
Under the district development authority structure, that responsibility belongs to the district administration to provide those acquittals as it is not the responsibility of the MPs.
The MPs are not responsible for compiling reports; these are the responsibilities of district administration.
They keep the paper work and make decisions and when they do not have them compiled, then it reflects badly on leaders.
And that is why district and provincial treasury staff should perform their responsibility as committed and honest public servants.
They should know their role and not mix it with politics.
Hence it is important to hire public servants who are educated to a level where they are competent.
The reports are important as it will enable the department to check whether the public money is spent on the right areas as provided for under the guidelines.
It is important to tell the government how the money is spent and a lot of our people need to get into the habit of auditing of funds particularly public funds.
Public servants need to take ownership and lead in service delivery and the district development authority is the best possible opportunity to build our villagers and deliver services.
Acquittal is a formal condition of funding.
On top of that, the Department of Implementation and Rural Development should be adequately funded so it can perform one of its key role of inspection and monitoring projects in districts.
This department plays an important role in supporting the Government deliver improved services to every province, district and local level government throughout the country.
It administers the service improvement programme (SIP) which includes monitoring and inspection of projects, evaluating of acquittals and reports.
At the same time, all Papua New Guineans should keep a look out for your MPs acquittal.
Everyone should be taking stock of the developments taking place in terms of social advancement and economic prosperity.
The voters have a right to check with your MPs and the public servants working at your DDAs and provincial governments.
These are the people responsible for delivering goods and services to you.
If there is mismanagement of funds, then ask your MPs and governors for they are responsible for the DSIP and PSIP grants.