Covid-19 funding row

By REBECCA KUKU
OPPOSITION Leader Belden Namah says the K280mil allocated by the Government for the Covid-19 funding should have been raised through a Supplementary Budget and approved by Parliament.
Namah told The National that the National Executive Council and Treasury Minister Ian Ling-Stuckey had no authority to raise the funding.
“Funds can only be raised through a Supplementary Budget,” he said.
“There is no supplementary budget in place.
“That is why we have been calling for Parliament to sit and approve a supplementary budget.”
Namah said a supplementary budget once approved by the Government “gives you a legal mandate”.
“Otherwise it is in breach of Section 209 of the Constitution,” he said.
“You are going outside the budgetary process to raise funds. The Treasurer to go out there and raise funds without a supplementary budget (is wrong).
“You can’t re-appropriate because that would be misappropriation of the 2020 national budget.”
Meanwhile, Namah called on Prime Minister James Marape to ask Indonesia to medically clear PNG citizens there before they are sent back home.
Namah, the Vanimo-Green MP, said the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases on the “other side” of the border was increasing.
“I think it’s important that the prime minister must make that call, and work with our counterparts on the other side of the border, especially the Governor of Papua in Iran Jaya to have Papua New Guineans there properly screened and medically cleared before they come back.
“We will also do our part, so once they come back we will quarantine them for two weeks again.”