Government guilty of gross mismanagement – and much more

The Somare led National Alliance government is guilty of gross mismanagement and is complicit in widespread corruption – according to its own MPs who sit on the Public Accounts Committee (PAC).

According to the PAC the Department of National Planning and Monitoring, the central agency which manages our K3.4 billion development budget and the K180 million district services improvement program is:

“incompetent and unable to manage its own budget”.

The Department is incompetent and cannot manage its own budget yet Somare and his government hand control of over K3.4 billion of our money to it every year.

Lets be honest – this is the action of an incompetent government.

And this situation is not new – it has prevailed for years and the PAC has been reporting on it since 2006.

As another commentator wrote recently “It just defies understanding that somebody should read what is contained in these [PAC] reports and fail to take action”.

The PAC has published other reports with similarly damning findings into the Lands Department, the Office of the Public Curator and the operations of the Sepik Highways, Roads, Bridges and Other Infrastructure Trust Fund, among others.

Each report has contained shocking accounts of corruption and criminal collusion by senior managers, flagrant breaches of the Public Finances Management Act, sheer neglect and downright theft.

The fact that the government has not taken any action on any of these reports is proof enough that they do not care.

Worse still, their inaction means that we are entitled to conclude that it is our individual MPs and the government collectively who are the ones that profit most from the corruption and theft.