Time to tackle fraud head on

FRAUD against our Government is a crime that directly or indirectly victimises every person in Papua New Guinea.
Therefore, an essential pre-condition for tackling fraud is recognising that it is most widespread than currently published figures indicate and that represents a significant loss to government revenue.
However, by its very nature, fraud is committed by government employees and cohorts who find that the value of the criminal gain is greater than the risk of detection.
So such situation must be changed and necessary changes can be achieved by building on existing good work and implementing the recommendations made by relevant government institutions that are to capture best practices from public and private sector organisations to successfully tackle this type of crime.
For instance, a most comprehensive estimate of public sector fraud should be produced on an annual basis.
This estimate should be broken down not just by organisation but by major cross-cutting types of fraud such as procurement fraud, staff fraud and fraudulent grant allocations for development projects.
The challenge for the Government is to create a National Fraud Authority to detect and monitor fraud in government.
The Ombudsman Commission should also be empowered to control fraud among our leaders.
I believe such measures will be essential to prevent fraud in a cost efficient way and with effective implementation will substantially reduce the opportunity to commit fraud against the public sector.
I urge the Government to act decisively to implement the fraud control measures and recommendations made to Ombudsman Commission and I believe that creating the National Fraud Authority will be well placed to coordinate and drive their delivery.
Finally, I would say that public sector organisations need to learn more from the private sector approach to restraining and seizing assets promptly and thus improve public sector asset recovery performance.
I also suggest that public sector organisations must consider making use of real time credit reference and other data checks when designing new systems.
Perhaps this could be a best option to prevent fraud and will encourage better service to our legitimate customers.

Jerry Marai
Waigani