Poor job by district admins

I refer to an article in The National yesterday on page 10 headlined “Concern raised on funds, reports”.
The Department of Implementation and Rural Development (DIRD) secretary raised his concern for the very poor compliance rate of acquittal reports of DSIP funds by district administrations.
I should commend him for being honest and vocal about a serious issue affecting service delivery across many districts in the country.
This is the second time the secretary has raised this same concern.
In May 2017, he highlighted this problem and bluntly blamed the district administrators and their public servants for non-compliance in fund acquittals.
Prior to that, in 2014 the auditor-generals audit report to Parliament stated clearly that there was a serious breakdown in DSIP governance programme including potential abuse of funds.
Again in this latest call flagging attention, secretary Aihi Vaki pointed out clearly that most of the DSIP funds were spent on travel allowances, hire cars and accommodation – these are not development priorities.
If this is the case for many districts, then it leaves many citizens wondering what development priorities are captured in the districts five-year development plans (a much celebrated occasion every time when those plans are launched)
The DIRD and the Auditor-Generals Office are government agencies mandated to monitor issues of compliance, accountability and transparency within the government system.
If their continued concerns are not heeded, then who else can the government pay attention to?
Subsequently the citizens of this country to whom the government is responsible for, will continue to suffer as millions of kina of public and donor funds is being misused by few MPs and their cohorts in the district administration.
At a time when the country is facing cash flow problems, the Parliament should seriously take heed of this national issue of non-performance of DDAs and freeze all DSIP funding temporarily.
Then review the DDA mechanism against its strategic intention of sustainably improving service delivery to districts and take corrective actions to make this mechanism make effective.
Thus before taking back PNG from foreigners, it would be an honourable gesture from the good prime minister to first take Papua New Guinea back from the corrupt locals at the district administrations.
Prime minister James Marape should take a bold stand to endorse a review committee to commence public consultations across the 89 districts of the country to assess effectiveness of the DDAs and provide recommendations to improve the performance of the DDA and its boards so that its stays true to its strategic intent.
Before there is more wastages through systematic failure, we should take corrective actions and put the country’s limited financial resources into productive use.
Help save our economy and importantly serve our people, to whom the government is responsible for.

Concerned Ples Man,
Bulolo,
Morobe