Demand oversight on SIP funding

IT will be most difficult to get Parliament to review the disbursement of the various Services Improvement Programme funding under the budget but experience tells us, this source of funding remains outside the public accounting system of the country.
The Auditor-General does not have oversight on this funding where upwards of K1.5 billion is expanded each year.
Across a parliamentary term of five years the nation spends K7.5 billion down this channel and each open member of parliament gets to spend upwards of K50 million.
We mention here that an open MP gets to spend this money with good reason.
As chairman of the district development authority, the open MP is the final authority on how the money is spent.
If it is misapplied, he has to be responsible and must take the blame. Likewise, if the money is applied correctly then he gets to take the credit.
Apart from guidelines that spell out how the SIPs are to be spent and where and the final submission by each district of the acquittals to, there is no check on how the money is expended.
Remember that the MP approves the National Budget in Parliament and a few get to design the budget as Ministers in Cabinet so that the parliamentarian is now controlling the budget at all levels of government from Parliament to the districts.
If the process is corruptive or corrupted along the way, it is now virtually impossible to get any oversight on it or arrest it because the entire process through every level of government is controlled by the 111 MPs – soon to be 118 following the 2022 elections and by 2027, 124.
By the same token funds allocated through this conduit can only increase because those approving any increases and those spending it are the same individuals.
There are 89 DDAs representing each open electorate in the country as against 396 Local Level Governments.
Each LLG is now required to make project submissions to DDA but there is no requirement under the law or anywhere else for the DDA to acquiesce to the request.
By the same token, each ward development committee can make its submission for projects under the same conditions.
The National Budget at present time approves each year K890 million under the DSIP (89 electorates at K10 million each); K445 million in PSIP (K5 million per electorate for provinces) and K198 million in LLGSIP (K0.5 million each for 396 LLGs).
A total K1.53 billion of the National Budget is expanded through this programme.
Across one term of Parliament, if these funds are religiously allocated yearly, a whopping K7.65 billion is spent by politicians.
If the money is spent as it should be there ought to be shining new projects everywhere in the country today.
These funds are aimed at exactly the same populations with no discernible note anywhere in evidence that this is so or coordination as to how or where the funds are spent.
Notice here that the provincial services improvement programme (PSIP) is awarded at K5 million for every electorate in a province when each electorate is covered by the DSIP at K10 million each.
The DSIP covers every LLG in the country and yet each LLG is awarded its own K0.5 million.
In truth then every one of the 89 electorates or districts in the country is allocated K15.5 million a year under these various guises.
Do the districts actually see K15.5 million money as a million kina question that requires answering.
As a new executive government and a new Parliament is about to be formed these are questions that must be addressed seriously, if not by the politicians, then certainly by civil society and the population to demand serious action and oversight on this level of funding.