Game of development plans, money

NOT too long ago, Grand Chief Sir Michael Thomas Somare introduced a policy called the Green Revolution.
At the same time, his deputy at the time Sir Puka Temu released the Vision 2050.
Sixteen years on, the Green Revolution is spoken of no longer. The agricultural pillar in Vision 2050 remains a pillar on paper and has hardly leapt from the paper onto the fields as crops and farm animals.
What happened was money. Heaps of money.
Believing that agriculture had been paid lip service long enough since Independence, Sir Michael followed up the Green Revolution with heaps of money.
There were talkshows and hugely expensive consultants engaged to carry out the policy.
Papers were written and seminars were held everywhere.
Then, Sir Michael fell sick. His government got taken over and the Green Revolution died the sure death of all revolutions – swiftly.
A year after Sir Michael’s government was taken, another idea was born.
An Australian-government funded programme in PNG reported that PNG had a road transport maintenance backlog of K45 billion.
Building new roads was all very well but existing roads were falling into disuse far faster than the country’s ability to build new roads.
It looked a Sisyphean task.
Undaunted, the Government of Peter O’Neill undertook to develop a new infrastructure programme to link the unlinked and unlock the economic regions of the country.
When the Government was changed in 2019, new Prime Minister James Marape, to his credit, decided to keep the infrastructure programme that he had championed as the Finance minister under O’Neill.
Marape called it Connect PNG and, in time, made it his lynchpin policy.
And he followed the programme with money. Heaps of money.
Like the Green revolution a decade earlier, it is the money in the Connect PNG programme that has attracted notoriety of late and may well have placed its survival under threat.
It was none other than O’Neill who, last week, dropped a bombshell statement in the media that a select few companies were helping themselves to a disproportionate sum of money under the Connect PNG programme.
He accused the Government of cronyism and of dishing out contracts to companies owned by family and friends of those in power.
Both Prime Minister Marape and Works and Highways Minister Solan Miriisim have denied O’Neill’s allegation in the media, and in Parliament.
A mole has been identified in the Department of Works & Highways who has been leaking documents, allegedly with inflated figures, but he is protected under the Whistleblower’s Act.
A thorough investigation has been promised by the Prime Minister with forensic accounting checks on the programme. That is as it should be.
Corruption will always creep into programmes and projects that are heavily funded so governance and compliance structures are fail-safe and corruption-proof.
An idea broached by Works and Highways secretary David Wereh seems a step in the right direction.
He wants to separate the funding aspects of the programme from the monitoring, implementation and management aspects of it. Corruption, where it exists in these programs must be weeded out immediately because corruption will kill important programmes. It will chase away important donors.
For the present Connect PNG has attracted important donors and they will be demanding transparency, accountability and probity.
Access is what this country requires most.