New rating system eyed to help lift districts

By HELEN TARAWA
THE Department of Provincial and Local Level Government Affairs (DPLLG) will give more responsibilities to districts that perform well, Secretary Dickson Guina says.
Guina told The National that the department will carry out an audit to determine how the districts have performed and report to the government by 2022.
“We will present to the government the development trend on how the districts were faring in terms of service delivery,” he said.
“We will work closely with the provincial governments, districts and the LLGs to see how they are progressing.”
He said that two months ago a team from the department carried out a pre-audit exercise in some districts in Central, Morobe, East New Britain, Southern Highlands and Enga.
“We categorised districts into three groups – category A was the district with the all the enablers, minimum standard to service delivery.
“Category B districts had only offices but without 24-hour power supply and they were performing but not at the level expected.
“Category C districts were lagging behind; they don’t have basic things like water, power, communications, no shopping services and banks. They have administration staff but they cannot do much without the basic services.”
He said they categorised the districts at that level to know the gaps that were present.
“When the government puts the money through the district and provincial services improvement programmes we will align it to bring every district up,” Guina said.
“In the Organic law we are not leaving anybody behind; every province is unique so we need to bring them up at their pace and based on their performance we give them the responsibilities.”
Guina said the department would audit all the 89 districts.
“If the districts performed well it meant provinces were progressing because districts form the provinces and the LLGs form the districts,” he said.
“This is something we have never done in the past.
“We want to be more innovative, creative and performance-based so we can see how we are progressing.
“We want to create districts as growth centres to attract the private sector to carry out businesses and provide basic services.
“When we create growth service centres in districts our people will not move to towns and cities because they will have access to all these services.”