Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister James Marape says funding for impending byelections is not an issue.

“We are assisting the Electoral Commission with funding, I have strongly advised Electoral Commissioner to get the byelection up and running.

“Put the programme together, get to Treasury and request funding and the byelections must be done. As far as the government is concerned, we want the byelections done at the earliest.”

The election needed to be “done now”, he added.

However, Electoral Commissioner Simon Sinai confirmed the deferral of the byelections was due to lack of funding.

“We are prepared and ready to conduct byelections in the three open electorates first, Sohe in Northern, Maprik in East Sepik and Porgera-Paiela in Enga,” Sinai said.

“However, due to the cash flow situation in the country, we have to wait for the lead agencies to secure the necessary funding for us to deliver the elections.”

Three byelections delayed
Sinai said byelections in Madang, Aitape-Lumi and Dei would not proceed as initially planned until the review matters before the courts were dealt with and concluded.

The issue of writs for the byelections for three electorates in PNG were scheduled for Wednesday and this was said to be now deferred until April due to financial constraints.

PNG Electoral Commission needs K20 million to run the three planned byelections and so far no funding has been allocated.

The Electoral Commission is still waiting for the Finance and Treasury Departments to release the funds that were requested through a budget submission for six open electorates where byelections were expected to be conducted this year.

Republished from the PNG Post-Courier by permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

An estimated 7000 people went to the seat of government and to the Congress building last Friday after the school management warned that budget allocations for this year were US$12 million short of what was needed to cover costs.

About 20 percent of New Caledonia’s children — 13,000 — attend Catholic schools, including all children in Belep and in the Isle of Pines where there are no alternatives.

To highlight their plight, the territory’s 62 Catholic schools, which employ about 1500 staff, did not accept any students in their boarding accommodation for a week, and offered no meals.

While the government says it will discuss the funding problems in early June, the administration of the Southern Province has announced the release of US$1.2 million.

It said the funds are to help stave off lay-off procedures.

Private education is the responsibility of New Caledonia as powers have been devolved from France.

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Papua New Guinea’s Service Improvement Programme worth more than K1 billion (NZ$440 million) has become a major cash cow for “irresponsible” leaders, says the monitoring agency.

In the past decade, the Provincial and District Services Improvement Programme has delivered much but has not achieved what it set out to deliver — vital government services like schools, health centres, roads and bridges, jetties to the rural population.

Its overseer, the Department of Implementation and Rural Development has now become concerned at the apparent abuse and misuse of public funds by political leaders and their district administration.

The DIRD now reports that a large amount of money has been spent on “ghost projects” which are not physically completed on the ground and cannot be monitored due to financial constraints among others.

Many are half complete health centres or abandoned school classrooms or teachers houses, says DIRD secretary Aihi Vaki.

“Not all of it has been properly acquitted kina by kina. Even the amount of money allocated by the Treasury Department to each district is unknown to the DIRD.”

However, Finance Secretary Dr Ken Ngangan has defended the transfer of the country’s service improvement budgets to the provinces and the remittance of funds by Finance Department as a policy initiative approved by Cabinet.

‘A misunderstanding’
“There is a misunderstanding of the legal framework for budget and expenditure management under which all public and statutory bodies operate,” he said.

“As reported, NEC Decision 240/2018 provided for DIRD oversight of PSIP/DSIP funds management and monitoring.

“Accordingly, the NEC decision was effectively put into effect through the 2019 National Budget process, in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution, PFMA and Appropriations Act, with PSIP/DSIP funds allocated to DIRD in the National Budget for management and monitoring.”

However, a concerned Vaki has termed it as an “open secret” known to the leaders and their district public servants.

He said the DSIP and PSIP acquittals were compounded by lack of surveillance and monitoring by his department staff due to lack of funding from the National Government despite request after request.

He said there were many issues encountered, some of which were reports of proposed ghost projects paid out and finding their way into the acquittal papers to DIRD.

District Services Improvement Project (DSIP) grants amounts to K960 million a year while provincial (PSIP) grants are K220 million a year. The total bill in a year disbursed by Treasury to MPs is K1.18 billion.

“Due to the increase in districts last year, this year’s allocation will increase to a whopping K1.239 billion,” Vaki said.

Concerns amplified
His concerns were amplified in 2021 by now sidelined Immigration Minister Bryan Kramer on multi-million kina projects in rural districts.

Kramer had said that projects were designed, pre-fabricated, and allegedly constructed according to the acquittals but in reality, there was nothing to show for on the ground.

Kramer, who was then Justice Minister, had also claimed that billions of kina were also lost to undelivered state contracts every year and investigations into some of these incomplete projects were made by the State Audit and Recovery Taskforce (SART) initiated by the Department of Justice and Attorney-General working with nine other state agencies with more than K25 million already recovered.

The current status of the SART since then is not known. Nor how much more they may have been able to identify or recover following the last update provided by Kramer.

These were examples of abuse and misuse on a national level, but on the DDA level, it was alleged that millions may have been squandered through unscrupulous and dubious project deals in rural areas.

Vaki was forthright in his revelation, adding that while 60 percent of MPs had made an attempt to acquit their funding, 40 percent had never provided evidence of how they had spent public money in their districts.

Republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz