Action must accompany words

THERE is something funny about the way people in positions of power actually come out in public to complain rather than do something about whatever they perceive to be wrong.
Many a time we hear ministers of state come charging out complaining about the state of affairs in their department or in government or in the country?
How many times do we hear the same from the lips of members of parliament and from department heads and so on?
The question we ask is: If these people in positions of power are complaining, if they are implying to all that they are unable to do anything, that the job at hand is beyond them, then, all is lost.
If they cannot do it, then who is there to fix the problems being complained of?
When Prime Minister Peter O’Neill talked of putting an end to talk and ushered in an era of action in his address to the nation, that is precisely what he was saying.
He wanted everybody to stop complaining, to stop proposing and to start doing something.
The public also does not want to know what it already knows. It does not want to know about the conditions they live in daily being described again.
Recently, an MP visited Port Moresby General Hospital and came out with a public statement stating that he was “shocked” at the state of affairs there.
We are actually shocked at his “shock”. He is a second-time politician.
Is he suggesting he has been on Mars or the Middle East in the past five years?
Is he suggesting that this is the first time he has visited the hospital.
Has he not visited there at all?
Has he not heard of the conditions complained of there?
The conditions at this and many other hospitals and health centres have been spoken off, reported and debated for years. Plus, shock does not translate into action.
What we would welcome most would be if that MP or any other one of them could move legislation and initiate an inquiry into why there is dire shortage of essential medicine and equipment in hospitals throughout the country but K300 million in health funds have not been spent and is now being redirected to shore up the anticipated budget deficit?
That is criminal negligence that ought to be inquired into and the culprits, if any, prosecuted. That is action, not talk or shock.
Another duo of new MPs travelled through their province and again expressed shock and disbelief at the state of schools, water supply, sanitary services.
Really, nobody wants to know. It is nothing new to them.
What the people most want to know is what is going to be done
about the state of affairs in schools, hospitals, and communities in that province and elsewhere.
Action is what is needed, not words.
Words have the nasty tendency of remaining out in the mental ether and of re-emerging at some future date to condemn you.
Papua New Guineans do not want to hear of proposals either. They have lived with promised actions all their lives. They want to see it done.
Actual action, not proposed actions.
The government has put a lot of proposals to the people of PNG.
The people must be forgiven if they remain sceptical still.
They have been given proposals before.
They need to see the proposals come to life. They want to hear over the next few days whether or not the first legislative draftsmen have been given directions to draft legislations that the government has proposed to bring in or amend.
We do not want to hear about proposals to fix up the Highlands Highway.
Not many among the public are engineers, economists or financial experts to appreciate fully the details of how to finance such an undertaking.
They would appreciate it all the more if a photograph could be shown of scores of road construction
equipment at Lae port ready to be shipped up the highway to start fixing up the highway.
The same applies to every other project or programme that is being proposed.
Seeing action would be a breath of fresh air in the stuffy atmosphere of promises.