Improvement still lacking in districts

The National Letters

FOR most of us, we shall agree that the district development authority (DDA) was a brilliant concept introduced by former Prime Minister Peter O’Neill to deliver the minimum basic services to the unreachable rural communities.
Through this mechanism, district services improvement programme (DSIP) and other development funding are supposedly to be made available to support establishment of basic humanitarian services and niche industries to provide employment to the rural communities.
The DSIP funding component has a break up of what funds are to be allocated for each basic services and funds are to be acquitted each year.
Provinces and districts that understand the concept have delivered more basic services to their communities and attracting corporate businesses into their territory, spinning off employment and other benefits.
It has been some years since the DSIP had been introduced and disbursed.
By now we presume that almost all provinces and districts in the country should have established or worked with key agencies to establish basic foundational services such as;

  • A MASTER plan for the province and district covering social and economic services;
  • SURVEYING for the lands within their provincial boundaries and identify commercial,
    agricultural and residential areas for development;
  • ELECTRICITY, water and sewerage services, if not established in all villages, at least within the district township areas;
  • UPGRADE and build road or jetties to every villages;
  • ENTER into public-private partnership to create manufacturing industries to supply the district and province with basic needs such as meat and milk products (beef and lamb), cereals (rice and wheat), fruits (apply and grapes) etc;
  •  ESTABLISH schools and hospitals at easy access by the rural communities;
  • WORK with churches to bring the word of God to every tribe and community;
  • ESTABLISH research and data centre to collect all types of data relevant to the district – topography, population, available services, etc.;
  • ESTABLISH parks, museums and libraries, botanical gardens, etc.; and,
  • TAKE care of the elderly people and establish educational support for orphans.

If such services are nonexistent, people have a right to question and know the plans and visions for the districts.
People deserve high-class services in these modern times, especially within their locality.
If we are not receiving these services, we must question why and who is responsible and hold these people accountable.
Provincial and district budget development committee meetings and decisions should be documented and made available for scrutiny by the Auditor-General’s Office and the appropriate beneficiaries (the people) each year to determine whether delivery targets were met or not and hold those persons responsible.
Often times, trying to put a finger on someone for abuse seem to go out the window.
Maybe, build a tough corporate governance structure into this DDA mechanism so that the decision making process is made by consent of all parties and documented based on 5-10 master development plan (blue print) of the province and districts.
Any leader that takes office after must take cue and follow the blue print.
No leader or public servant should go to his death bed regretting, that when he/she had the opportune time to remedy some things for the ease of his fellowmen, did not have the spine and courage to do so.
We should not be accepting low class service and psychopathic games played by some of our leaders.
Everyone must rise up to be responsible and critic the performance and competency level of our leader or member.
We vote the leaders into parliament, and the quality we vote in, depends on our sanity and rational judgment.
If we vote fools, there is no better way to say but to say that we ourselves are fools too.
Therefore, it is justified that we do not deserve better services.
We do not want to be called fools and so we will vote for the right women and men into parliament in 2022.

Ruthy Cruz and Nates,
Jabiru Drive, Gordon