ORD’s task is to monitor DSIP

Letters, Normal

ALTHOUGH I have no authority to comment on a Government’s policy, I take offence to the letter “ORD must take blame for poor success rate” (The National, Nov 9) by “Street consultant”.
The district services improvement programme (DSIP) is a major rural intervention of the Government to the tune in excess of K1.3 billion, inclusive of the K10 million direct funding to each of the 89 districts.
Its actual implementation has been over a year and is continuing. 
The PNG Government, through policy decision number 55/2008 of the National Executive Council (NEC), has placed squarely the responsibility for implementing the DSIP on the district administrations. 
Hence, this policy dictates the way DSIP is being executed and is manifested in the way funds are transmitted into the district treasuries and placed in the hands of the district administration officials to either turn the DSIP into a success or failure.
Because of the policy decision, ORD is relegated to the task of compliance monitoring. 
This means ORD is responsible only for the compliance aspect of implementation of the DSIP by the district administrations.
Here, ORD monitors to check on the processes and procedures of the regulating instruments (that is guidelines and relevant financial instructions) as to whether they are being complied with or otherwise by the actual implementers.  
The success rate alluded to me by The National relates to the compliance of processes of the administrative guidelines and its related financial instructions.
This no way reflected on the actual implementation rate of the DSIP.
Last August, ORD advertised three times in The National.
The first advertisement appeared on Thursday, Aug 13, with the other two on the following two Thursdays.
Stakeholders and interested persons were advised in the advertisements of a series of workshops to review the DSIP implementation.
The public were advised of the sites and dates of six regional workshops and the contact people for interested participants. 
Last month, ORD hosted six regional workshops in Port Moresby, Kokopo, Vanimo, Madang, Goroka and Mt Hagen. 
Participants were district administration officials and their provincial counterparts, who included district administrators, district treasurers, sectoral officials and planners, as well as two elected and two nominated members of the JDP&BPC. 
Other interested members of the public also turned up in numbers to understand and appreciate the process and procedures of the DSIP.
The outcome of the DSIP review workshops is now being compiled for presentation to the minister responsible. 
Hopefully, this should set the tone or basis for further work on the DSIP and its related activities of delivering services to the rural areas.
The writer could have attended the workshops and expressed his/her dissatisfaction.
I can only guess the writer did not turn up.
There are many stakeholders involved in the implementation of the DSIP, some of whom have questionable standing.

 

Kelly Lovuru
Deputy ORD director