Pruaitch calls out O’Neill over funds concerns

FOREIGN Affairs Minister Patrick Pruaitch is calling on former prime minister Peter O’Neill to get his priorities right when he criticised alleged misuse of funds for Covid-19.
Pruaitch was responding to concerns raised by O’Neill on Wednesday about the potential diversion and misuse of funds for state of emergency operations.
O’Neill said the limited resources allocated for health programmes should be properly used and managed.
“Every kina that is allocated to the Covid-19 response must be used for health purposes only,” O’Neill said.
The Aitape-Lumi MP disproved O’Neill’s concerns, stating that “misuse and misappropriation during O’Neill’s term of office was so great that multiple inquiries could not discover how much public money was lost.” “(O’Neill) has failed to cooperate with the Commission of Inquiry into his government’s K3 billion loan scandal, where funds lost are 130 times greater than the initial K23 million Covid-19 budget,” Pruaitch claimed.
He said if the Government had limitless resources to investigate inflated contracts and misappropriated funds, inquiries into the O’Neill-led government would last more than the full term of any single government.
The National Alliance party alleged that the Apec Summit and Pacific Games were events that involved inflated costs and misuse.
“Then there was the Manumanu land scandals where the findings of a public inquiry were swept under the carpet so that those guilty of misappropriation and wrongdoing could never be charged.”