Policy changes

IT is not quite often that you read in the newspaper comments coming from the private sector or individuals about the lack of proper healthcare services, road access, telecommunications facilities, electricity, etc, in our rural districts.
Recent news articles in our daily newspapers highlighted one private company official having physically seen firsthand the lack of government services.
The National newspaper’s editorial, Thursday, Jan 10, highlighted the need for on-the-spot physical inspections, on-the-ground social auditing, and general accountability reporting of services being implemented in districts and local level government council areas.
It is important that these huge amount of funds now being disbursed to the districts in recent years, are diligently and effectively transformed into sound development projects, per the rolling five-year plans of the district development authority, and in conformance with the funds’ key policy requirements.
Often, there are news reports of districts misapplying these development grants for other non-approved projects.
This results in, for example, incompletion of a health centre facility, and law and order funds being misapplied for other projects, causing police to beg for assistance like Nipa-Kutubu police in Southern Highlands recently.
The district service improvement programme (DSIP) allocation of K10 million annually are already proportioned into percentages covering several key areas of development focus.
The DD should ensure that these are not manipulated to the cost of these development sector programmes.
One DDA had already, in its wisdom, decided to transfer certain percentages of two of its sector programmes to the other.
This is against the DSIP policy, which requires the district to spend its DSIP grant funding in accordance with set proportions covering the different sectors.
There is ample evidence from various Auditor-General’s annual reports covering districts, DSIP funding being expended on unrelated projects outside the required proportions, resulting in undesired outcomes and also jeopardising the Government’s DSIP funding’s objectives.
Indeed, as alluded to by The National editorial, there is inadequate expert capacity at district level to manage these huge amount of funds being allocated to the districts.
This calls for immediate action by Government, through Department of Implementation and Rural Development (DIRD) and other national line agencies, to set up either provincial or district social audit units to help in monitoring, reporting of and accountability of our service delivery mechanisms.
These social audit units should be established comprising of a special cadre of experienced personnel in economics, architecture, engineering, finance, etc.
Although there is already a check-and-balance mechanism in place in the districts, through the district planning management team (DPMT), there is still lack of capacity at district level to properly manage the all-important procurement, tendering, selection, implementation, monitoring and reporting of progress of projects.
Because of ongoing reports of the district’s lack of expert capacity and the district officials’ tendency to misuse or misapply DSIP funds in recent years, disbursement of these funds had now been taken back by the office of the DIRD.
Release of these funds will again now be at the discretion of the DIRD, as from this year onwards, and will follow stringent financial management guidelines in particular submissions of proper acquittal reports by the districts, being the main criteria.
Such rearrangements will obviously return to the status quo, with these funds being delayed by Waigani, impacting on smooth services delivery.
So much so for continuous policy changes.

Lorenitz Gaius
Ketskets village