By Paul Barker, Institute of National Affairs

THE Prime Minister wants departmental heads to explain why services are not reaching the people.

It is odd that he does not know the answer.

For many years, operating funds for recurrent goods and services and infrastructure maintenance, particularly at sub-national level, have been hacked back.

As the NEFC has highlighted, in nearly all provinces there is inadequate funding for core services like health and education, even after the amendment to inter-government financing.

National road maintenance for the entire country has been allocated a paltry K30 million for this year, with nothing for emergency repairs, which consumed most of these funds.

The public service has long been undermined by political appointments (so that many public servant bosses can tell ministers what they want to hear but not the actual truth) and lack of routine training and staff replacement in priority services.

This has led to many nurses and midwives, for example, working until they reach retirement age or close to it.

And where has the money gone to?

The obvious answer is massive misappropriation at the political and bureaucratic level, a burgeoning payroll – with ghost names, duplication and poor performance, inadequate staffing in various priority areas – and wasteful development budgets and schemes, white elephants and luxurious items such as the proposed Pacific Medical Centre at Bautama and Falcon executive jet.

Ministers and officials make often but totally unproductive trips overseas and claiming travel and allowance.

Various medium and long-term plans are being generated; some are sound but most are nonsense. With the MTDS 2005-10 having lapsed, the priorities are ignored.

The government is hooked on the belief that LNG will fix the country’s problems.

Unless the public sector is transparent and practises accountability, the government will have to pay for the interests of the whole population, rather than its own interests, and the LNG will worsen rather than improve the country’s long-term plight.

Another great opportunity to invest in the population and PNG’s future will be wasted.

This may seem obvious to most outside and many within the government, but apparently is not being spelt out.

It is positive perhaps that at least there is recognition that all is not right and much needs to be addressed.

Greater public disclosure of “public expenditure” down to local level, and a new culture of service provision, rather than the prevailing tendency towards secretiveness within government would also be a step in the right direction.

First published in The National