Data from district vital for planning: Local leader

National, Normal
Source:

The National, Wednesday October 23rd, 2013

 By ELLEN TIAMU

THE government should seriously look at developmental plans of local level governments and wards if it is to bring greater improvement to the lives of rural people, a LLG president said. 

Newly-elected president of the Leron-Wantoat LLG, in Morobe, Andrew Gena said the 2014 national budget appropriations must run parallel with empirical data from the districts to ensure they met the real needs of the people.

Gena said the data from the councils could be used to monitor and evaluate government policy and programme implementation.

Commending the neighbouring Umi-Atzera LLG, in Markham, for its five-year development plan, he said wards in Leron-Wantoat would follow suit.

He said there was a lack of implementation of government policies and programmes at all levels due to lack of planning, funding and initiative by government officers.

Gena said this had been the major failure in the implementation of the Organic Law on Provincial and Local Level Governments and the Provincial and Local Level Government Act 1997.

“Because of this anomaly, poverty is rampant, corruption is rife, and crime is sky-rocketing, and the huge potential that 85% of the nation’s population in the rural areas holds, in terms of assisting to contribute to the national coffers through tax, is being left untapped since 1997.

He said bottom-up planning through the formulation of ward development plans and LLG development plans was the way to go.