Community advocacy organization ACT NOW! is today launching a new website, www.ddawatch.org to promote transparency and accountability in how government funds are used across all 94 Districts in Papua New Guinea.

The DDA Watch website will provide the general public, officials and academics with impartial and non-partisan information on the work of each District Development Authority, with the ultimate aim of helping to improve the quality of local infrastructure and service delivery.

A moratorium on new Forest Clearance Authorities, recently announced by the PNG Forest Authority, has been welcomed by community advocacy organization ACT NOW, but the group says the measure does not go far enough.

“We are pleased the National Forest Board has recognized that the FCA system is being widely abused and has ordered a halt on the issuing of new Authorities and an audit of all existing FCA projects”, says Campaign Manager Eddie Tanago.

Papua New Guinea’s latest corruption score is a damning indictment of the government’s failure to properly fund anti-corruption agencies and it confirms PNG as one of the most corrupt country in the world.

The recently published Transparency International Corruption Perception Index (CPI) shows PNG’s ranking has dropped six places from 124 th to 130 th out of 180 countries . PNG’s CPI index score which is based on public sector corruption has dropped from 31 in 2021 to 30 in 2022.