Government plans need people input

ACTING chief secretary to government Manasupe Zurenuoc is no newcomer to development plans.
Ever since he left law school at the University of PNG, he has been very closely involved in one of the most unique and original development forums in the country in his native Morobe province.
Called the bus kivungs, this development forums started in Morobe in 1978 with the introduction of provincial governments and Morobe had held doggedly onto this method of planning every since.
So, when Zurenuoc calls for precise guidelines to be spelt out on how to move forward with the government’s development strategic plan 2030, and the PNG Vision 2050, it is the voice of experience.
He must be listened to.
PNG aims to improve its human development index and be among the world’s top 50 countries over the next 40 years.
That is the dream but, realising that dream, will require more a set of plans, programmes and timetables backed up by yearly financial appropriations.
This is absent from the plans and this is what Zurenuoc is referring to when he calls for more precise guidelines to be spelt out.
Zurenuoc urged the participants of a workshop on the subject from the departments of Prime Minister and NEC and National Planning and Monitoring to “strategically align’’ both development plans so that they complement each other.
“As strategic thinkers in the public service, we owe it to our political leaders and our clientele, the grassroots, to simplify our plans to guide us from point A to point B,” Zurenuoc said.
The question that comes immediately to mind is: How does one go about achieving that when all has been tested and tried before?
Here, Zurenuoc might supply the answer from his own experience with the bus kivungs.
Prior to and following the introduction of provincial governments, a series of meetings were held between Morobe national politicians, local leaders and senior public servants to trash out the lines of demarcation and responsibilities of this second and the third tier of government, the local government council system. These series of meetings became known as bus kivungs, which literally translate from Tok Pisin to mean bush meetings.
All the meetings were conducted outside the boundaries of Lae, the provincial headquarters, a tradition that has remained to this day.
There was a particular reason for holding the kivungs outside the provincial capital. It was felt that decisions affecting development policies and strategies were to be conducted close to the rural people, on whose behest and behalf, these policies were drawn up and directed. Social and economic policy and planning could not be drawn up in isolation and the people were to be central to the concerns raised at these meetings and the considerations arising out of them.
The real meaning of development, it was argued, was not new roads, bridges, buildings or the growth of business. Rather, it was to be the development of the people that all planning and policy would be directed at.
The government and bureaucrats wanted as much as possible to involve the ordinary people in the planning and policy making process so that they had a say in how they wanted the government to improve their circumstances.
It was a bottom-up planning approach that, for a brief period of seven years, shone and Morobe became a model province in the 1980s.
Today, despite the fact that the country is flush with cash and more is headed in this direction, ordinary Papua New Guineans are complaining that basic services were not filtering down to that level.
It is a fact.
In the midst of a country whose economy is growing in leaps and bounds, even well ahead of average global economic growth and despite the global economic recession, the people live in abject poverty.
It is as if the government and people are so far removed from each other so as to make them total strangers to each other.
It is time the government started thinking of more bus kivungs so that it knows what is needed on the ground. Only that will help crystallise the plans into actionable policies and programmes with achievable targets and timetables and realistic money plans to fund them.