Dept: Special grants abused

 THE Department of National Planning and Monitoring has raised concerns over the abuse of special support grants (SSG) by provincial governments and districts that host mining projects.

These funds were incentives provided annually by the government and kept by the department.

This year, between K50-60 million had been allocated as grants for the mining provinces.

Mining programme planner Mark Goiye said the department had realised that provincial and district government officials responsible for distributing the grants were not sure where the funds should be spent.

He said that when addressing the parties to the OK Tedi memorandum of agreement in Kokopo last week.

He said one of the reasons was that predecessors involved in the allocation of the special support grants did not educated their successors on the guidelines.

Under one of the provisions of the guidelines, Goiye said the funds should be spent on projects exclusively in districts that host mining projects and impacted areas and not in other districts. 

He said the department was aware that this had not been the case in many instances.

He said this often led to host districts missing out on development and infrastructure benefits.

The department is now visiting provincial and district offices to carry out awareness programmes to educate relevant officers on the guidelines. They had begun conducting educational awareness campaigns during MoA reviews.