COIs need to be held

THE government needs to wake up from its years of slumber and must now undertake a few COI’s (Commission of Inquiries) over a number of its departments for abuse, corruption and blatant mishandling of their fiduciary duties and responsibilities to the people of this country.
Why has the government allowed such rots to continue unabated for so long?
These are public concerns and that there are unequivocal evidences which warrants specialised investigations hence the suggestions for COI to investigate these institutions, only two of which are highlighted below due to limited space.
Firstly, one of government institutions that had featured prominently in the public domain is the Department of Petroleum and Energy (DPE).
Of concern is this department’s corruptive handling of the various land owners royalty benefits trust accounts, various business development grants (BDG), various infrastructures development grants (IDG), and the still on-going land owner identification study in the highland provinces.
Monies and funds held in trust accounts had been paid out in suspicious circumstances not to the actual beneficiaries or recipients of royalty payments, but unfortunately to people whom have no legitimate rights to be paid such, evidently with collisions with DPE officials.
The BDG and the IDG funding’s were part of the national government’s projects initiatives to assist affected provincial and local level governments, as well as the impacted landowners along the pipeline corridor and license areas, during the PNG LNG project construction phases.
The BDG funding that supposed to have been given as seed capital to start up landowner companies, were instead allocated to Port Moresby based landowner ‘paper companies’, private individuals, politicians, public servants, and not landowner companies within the project impacted areas.
And who knows the whereabouts were the IDG funding paid to, as they were hardly any evidence of provincial and local level government contracts awarded to landowner companies undertaking any infrastructure developments along the license areas and pipeline corridor buffer zones.
The government’s so-called clan vetting or land owner identification study commenced with a consultancy firm being contracted for an amount of K10 million and unfortunately did not make its final report after only six months in the field, and one wonders where the remaining funds went to.
The government’s so-called Expenditures Implementation Committee (EIC), established within the DPE entrusted the responsibility to monitor and report on developments progress for those BDG and IDG funds disbursed, had miserably failed to do so.
Secondly, another of the government’s institutions that has also featured prominently in the public domain, that also needs to be investigated is the Health Department into the mishandling and corruption in the procurement and supply of medical supplies throughout the country.
It seems almost every week we read in the media reports of health centres in our cities and the rural outstations running out of basic medical supplies, and one would question as whether those responsible for delivering these drugs are doing their jobs or not?
Just last week our daily newspapers highlighted very high rates of child malnutrition and stunted growth in our children
under five years due to lack of adequate attention for medical treatments.
The TB sacrilege has now become pandemic nationwide with the country now classified as one of the worst affected in the
world, and again due lack of adequate attention by Health Department.
Our health services delivery in our cities and rural areas has been on the decline in recent years with frequent lack of medicines and supplies, lack of adequate transport, lack of trained staff, staff houses condition deteriorating, and this is without doubt is a direct result of corruption and mismanagement of funds (donor and budgetary) by Health Department officials.
There is a total breakdown in the current medical procurement and supply distribution systems, where it appears to have been monopolised by the same pharmaceutical company as well as the same local medical supply distributors for a number of years now, without any significant improvements to Health Department’s medical supplies delivery system in PNG.
Is this not a clear recipe for corruption and mismanagement that would clearly warrant detailed investigation into fiduciary duties and responsibilities of the Health Department in the provisions of providing health care services nationwide?

Lorenitz Gaius
Ketskets village