Too much spent on COP26 meet

ACCORDING to a regional news agency Asia Pacific Report, Papua New Guinea – a country faced with a depressed economy and its public health system on the brink of total collapse due to the Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic – sent a 62-member delegation to Europe to attend the COP26 Climate Change conference at the cost of a whopping K5.8 million.
The other daily reported that the initial budget for PNG’s participation was set at K20 million for 82 people.
However, this was brought down to K5.8 million, but the National Executive Council approved only K3 million and reduced the number of delegates to 62.
Prime Minister James Marape stayed in PNG and appointed his Environment and Conservation Minister, Wera Mori, to head the delegation to Glasgow.
The money was spent on airfares, accommodation and allowances and the delegation requested, from the Finance Department, K800,000 for airfares and K620,000 for accommodation for 10
nights.
Furthermore, travel allowances for the special envoy, the six other MPs with their officers was about K2,500-K3,000 a day.
This is the second international conference on climate change PNG has participated in.
After the COP15 conference held in Paris, France, in 2015, then environment minister, Sir John Pundari, went public and condemned the conduct of some members of the government delegation to that conference.
In his criticism, Sir John particularly talked about the attendance of members of the delegation, noting that some went missing, others turned up
late while others left early for home.
At that time, Sir John said he was very disappointed that even his fellow ministers who were part of the government delegation quickly disappeared.

David Lepi