Diagnose the cause and cure it

WITH reference to media reports about the Government to lose K1billion to sink-hole programmes by former minister for Inter-Government Relations and member for Wewak Open, it would be unfair to destroy a book by its cover.
Member, you should not be reacting to the symptoms rather, diagnose the cause and cure it.
The then O’Neill-Dion government in its wisdom saw the need for vital statistics thus invested to establish a centralised government information bank.
All agencies would draw information from there for their own purposes, for informed decision making and evidence based planning and policy formulation for equitable distribution of wealth and government services for the development of this nation.
The registration system, commonly known as National Identification (NID) system, was designed to generate statistical information in tables and graphs drawn down to the village/ward level.
The system would generate statistics which would populate births and deaths (and project current population), marriages, adoption, divorce, remarry, widow, widower, literacy rate, types of marriages (civil, customary, defector), infant mortality, maternal mortality, causes of death, elderly, disability, human resource capacity, by sex and age including clans and tribe names just to name a few.
Moreover, 2015-2019 is a sufficient time period.
It is high time the National Executive Council summon the acting registrar-general and the former minister to present the statistical report, in the form of tables and graphs.
By virtue of the Civil Registration Act, the person is obliged to report biannually. Otherwise it would be in breach of the Act.
The objective of the NID project was to establish and improve the Civil and Identity Registry infrastructure, human resource capacity and decentralise the functions to the ward and district levels, apart from delivering the NID in partnership with Department of Provincial, Local Level Government Affairs, PNG Electoral Commission and National Statistics Office.
However, due to heavy political presence and influence by past ministers of National Planning, likewise conflict of interest, the Civil Registration Act was transferred from the Ministry of Youth, Religion and Community Development to the Ministry of National Planning in February, 2014.
Consequently, the whole project lost focus and deviated from serving its purpose thus remains to this very day.
Apparently, the Office of Civil and Identity Registry has its left foot with the Ministry of National Planning and the right foot with the Department for Community Development and Religion.
The NID project had no administrative structure, thus piggy-pegged on the Civil and Identity Registry administrative structure.
I think, the way forward is that since PNG NID project had lapsed on Dec 31, 2016 the government of the day should return the remaining activities, including the Civil Registration Act, to the Ministry for Youth, Religion and Community Development.
Put both feet together and the Office of Civil and Identity Registry can ‘take back PNG’.
I agree with the MP for Wewak Open.
The current government in its entirety should rectify this issue because under the current arrangement, the Social and Law and Order Sector, through the District Community Development Centres, the Civil and Identity Registry will be one of the key paradigm to avoid further lambasting as a failed project or a sink-hole programme.

Suppressed, Wewak