Do away with old filing system

YESTERDAY’S front page headline on both dailies should be a wakeup call to the relevant authorities involved including the Government.
This has now become more than a social issue and has turned into a national security issue.
The bulk of the populace of this country are rooted in the rural settings compared to the three major cities of Port Moresby, Lae and Mt Hagen.
They are completely oblivious to what is happening at the top levels and they will only eat what the higher ups feed them.
The main issue right now is that most of the public service machinery is operated by the old reforms that were in place post-Independence until today.
In most government departments, the process of recordkeeping or record management is kept in the old store and file systems manually.
The Government should now consider doing away with the manual handbook systems and find means to implement database systems or systemic recording of all rank and file public servants in the country with the teachers at the top of the list.
It should take note that some retail merchants in the country are facilitating an underground black market of creating forged documents, including certificates and others.
The Government should consider revitalising the National Intelligence Organisation (NIO) and do a sweep of all business activities in the country.
It should then make it a policy that business and retail merchants who subscribe their details to the Investment Promotion Authority should give the layout or blueprint of their business area as well.
The Government could then send out the relevant agencies tasked every month to inspect and monitor these retail outlets because most of these merchants start out small and then begin to encroach into other illicit dealings to diverse their financial takings.
This leads to the issue of tax evasion, but that’s a separate issue in itself.
Immigration and Customs are important pieces to this operation.
Whenever a suspicious or invalid transactions occur at our ports, they should be immediately flagged and the entity involved in the transaction should blacklisted from operating in the country.
Records of such should be transmitted to the Government and the police for immediate investigations on the root of these operations.
I say this because the issue of fake certificates, commonly practiced in our country, is not a social issue itself, it’s a criminal issue which targets our national security and I believe some underground business entities are behind this.
To strengthen our institutions by creating a database system is just the foundation to it all but the relevant government machinery should corroborate to stamp out this cancer that will surely destroy our children’s future and that of our nation years ahead.

Private Citizen, Pom