People must not be fooled by empty promises again

Letters

LOOK to the east, west, north, south and everywhere in between, what do you see?
We see huge world-class resource projects of all kinds.
Most have been in existence for decades and many more new ones are coming up.
These project developers and governments have been telling us that our lives will change for the better. Government services like health, education, law and order, roads and bridges will be available to us.
A lot of small and medium enterprises and jobs will be created.
Can you see and feel the impact of these projects and government presence?
These projects are creating jobs and paying taxes but our government’s ignorance has been the problem.
It chooses to ignore corruption which is eating up our jobs and our revenue. Governments have failed to manage and control corruption in its departments and agencies, allowing unscrupulous individuals to take advantage of the situation.
Governments have also failed to spend funds to create jobs.
For example, local printing companies win contracts worth millions of kina but because they lack the capacity, they send the jobs overseas.
This has been going on for many years and governments have failed to fix it.
Thirdly, governments have failed to enforce labour laws, one of which requires companies to train up employees to eventually take over jobs that pay more than K100,000 a year.
Companies are also required to recruit apprentices but this law has also not been enforced.
Governments make a lot of noise about development efforts such as the Services Improvement Policy (SIP) and big development budgets.
For example, Finance Minister James Marape was reported as saying in March that the Government had processed K5 billion over the last four to five years through provincial and district treasuries.
However, what really matters is who is spending the money, where and how.
MPs and their supporters swarm on the SIP funds like flies on uncovered meat.
More often than not, the funds go missing and little work is done.
The SIP was cleverly designed to keep MPs and governments in power.
That is why SIP funds are highly politicised and no real developments are realised to benefit the people.
When the new government was elected in 2012, people hoped it would aggressively tackle corruption and implement its SME master plan.
It failed to deliver both.
Let us not be fooled again.

Victim of Corruption
Port Moresby