Attitude change needed to achieve goals

PNG is committed to implementing eight millennium development goals.
These are the goals to:
*Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger;
*Achieve universal primary education;
*Promote gender equality and empowerment of women;
*Reduce child mortality;
*Improve maternal health;
*Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases;
*Ensure environmental sustainability; and
*Develop a global partnership for development.
To achieve these goals will require a whole of government approach led by those line departments which are directly linked to the goals.
The key departments are education and health, which cover goals one to six, environment and conservation and the new department of climate change which cover goal number seven and the Department of Foreign Affairs which covers goal number eight.
The Department of National Planning, Monitoring and Rural Development happens to be the lead agency which is the focal point for monitoring the progress of MDGs, for resourcing MDG-related programmes and for aligning government programmes and strategies so that they are compatible and complementary to the MDGs.
Other important government stakeholders are, of course, the Department of the Prime Minister, Community Development Department and the National AIDS Council.
So far, it is acknowledged that PNG and many nations of the world will fall far short of achieving the MDGs by the target date of 2015.
PNG, at least, is confident that it will make tremendous progress by then and stakes that confidence on a stable political climate, eight years of robust economic growth and a planning apparatus that, at least on paper, appears both visionary and do-able.
That confidence, however, does not appear to be backed by the correct work attitude by the principle players in the development stake.
It is all very well to have glowing plans but it is quite another to make those plans work for the country. The difference between good paperwork and making the plans leap off the planning table to work is work attitude and that tragically does not appear to be there.
To take an example, president of the media council Joe Kanekane last week decried the singular absence of government representatives at the media council meet in Goroka which was dedicated to implementing the MDGs and how the media could be used to impact and promote the goals.
Most departments, which are involved in one way or the other, were invited. Except for Health secretary Dr Clement Malau, none of the departments turned up. Malau attended the meet, presented his department’s assessment of the MDGs and left.
Most notable absentees were the Department of  Planning and Monitoring representatives who were meant to present the second report on the implementation of MDGs.
Civil society groups, the United Nations and churches turned up in force to engage in meaningful debate on MDGs implementation, areas where PNG is falling behind and how such work can be assisted by civil society. Alas, there was nobody to engage and, in the end, the groups left none the wiser.
Another excellent opportunity to engage with civil society, the media and churches and other interested donor and multilateral organisations fell through. And, that is what we are talking about when we assert that the government lacks both the capacity and the attitude to drive and achieve its own stated desires and plans.
Yet the attitude towards attending such a conference abroad is completely different.
Mention a meeting in Australia or Japan or the United States, and government departments fall all over each other to get large contingents to these conferences. What the conferences deliver, indeed what is brought back to the country, is often negligible and, as often, their value is unknown.
It is just one good money wasting junket to which our public servants and politicians merrily spend public money without any concern.
Unless and until such attitudes are changed, grand plans, schemes and commitments will remain just that – ideas and plans until the people who are meant to work them can get down and do what they are paid to do.
Achieving the goal will require home-grown solutions. No amount of globetrotting will sort out our problems.