State must pay all service providers

 IN JUNE last year, service providers for the Papua New Guinea Electoral Commission threatened to disrupt local level government (LLG) elections over their outstan­ding payment claims for the 2012 General Election.

Electoral Commissioner An­­drew Trawen said then the amount it owed to the service providers was almost K13 million.

He said the commission had no money to fully settle the debt and the K50 million allocated by the National Gov­ernment for the LLG elections was insufficient.

Trawen had been knocking on Waigani’s door for months pleading for another K30m to top up the LLG election budget and to settle the commission’s outstanding debts to service providers. His request for the additional funding was ignored 

The outstanding claims for services rendered during the hectic 2012 General Election seemed to have all been swept under the carpet in the corridors of power.

Fourteen months later, the nightmare has returned to give the country’s most seasoned chief electoral officer more sleepless nights.

Trawen had warned the po­litical leadership that without an additional K30m, the commission would not be able to carry out most of its LLG election plans, let alone settle all outstanding claims by service providers.

The LLG elections were conducted without the additional funds and while the commission scrapped through to declare new LLG presidents and ward councillors in the Southern, Momase and Islands regions, the Highlands region had more than its share of failed elections.

Trawen warned last year that financial problems and disruptive actions by disgruntled service providers in certain parts of the country remained and required urgent attention by the Government. He reported one particular incident at the time that should have rung warning bells in the corridors of power. 

Trawen was gravely concerned that service providers from the 2012 national elections had forcefully closed a number of provincial el­ectoral offices, including Mt Hagen and Madang, and demanded their outstanding payments by the commission.

Faced with a major dilemma, Trawen appealed to the disgruntled service providers to remain calm and assured them their dues would be settled.

However, the Government did not come to his rescue then and still refuses to entertain the commission’s repeated requests for additional funds.Seemingly, the political leadership is preoccupied with its new development initiatives such as the district services improvement programme and not trying to take care of unfinished business.

It has come to a stage where the Electoral Commission’s headquarters at Hohola, NCD, has been bombarded over the past few weeks by angry service providers demanding their outstanding payments.

Trawen revealed this week that the outstanding claims had doubled to K24m and could be settled next year when funding is made available by the Government through the 2015 national budget appropriations.

In the meantime, the commission is cutting back on some of its activities to save funds to settle some of the outstanding debts.

Still not satisfied with Trawen’s repeated assurance, about 50 service providers fronted the commission’s office yesterday and raised their grievances with the media.

Most of them said they had not been paid since 2012 while some waited since 2013. “We’ve wasted so much time for our bills to be paid and we are in a cloud of what’s really causing the delay. When we come here, they tell us that our claims are not registered or funding is not available or officers on duty travel. We cannot go on waiting as we’ve spent a lot while in the city,” hire care owner Steven Mathews said.

A former assistant returning officer added: “As an ARO, our pays have not been paid for controlling the polling and counting and our lives are under threat because of the cars we hired and the guest houses we used. We might be attacked any time and the EC needs to pay up quickly to avoid problems.”

These are genuine grievances from citizens who feel they have been hard done by.

The least they expect is a commitment by the Government to pay up.