Money dished out but where is the product?
The National Government Goods and Services funding for Provincial and Local Level Government, for the 1st Quarter of 2010, has already been allocated and partially released.
It is interesting to note that the following types of grants exist and are expanded every quarter of each financial year.
Administration Grants that are used by each Provincial Governments for administrative overheads and not salaries or allowances.
Function Grants are meant to pay for operational and recurrent costs of goods and services delivery. Provincial governments are required to fund a core set of Minimum Priority Activities (MPA) towards the Medium Term Development Strategy.
Do you know what the core sets of MPA, your provincial government is required to fund for each sector, apart from the broader range of activities that they must consider?
The MPA for health, which provincial governments are expected to pay for with this grant are:
- Operation of rural health facilities;
- Health Outreach patrols and Clinics; and
- Drug Distribution.
If your health centre is closed because there are no medicines, or that you are told to pay for the drugs or there are no health outreach patrols into your area, ask your provincial government why they have not funded their MPA when they have the money.
The MPA for the education program would be for provincial governments to fund operational costs of primary and secondary schools especially:
- Distribution of school materials
- Supervision of schools by district and provincial officers; and
- Operation of district education offices
The next time your children are sent home because there are no teachers, ask your provincial government where the money that pays for the expenses of supervising schools have gone to?
And if you are told to pay for your children’s textbooks, ask the provincial department of education where the funds allocated for payment of distribution costs have gone. Parents and students should not bear the costs of material distribution. This isn’t fair!
The MPA for this grants are maintenance costs of provincial roads and bridges, jetties and wharfs, and airstrips. This grant cannot be used for construction of new roads or maintenance of buildings, or for major reconstruction or rehabilitation of unusable existing roads.
Surely the Lae City roads should qualify as provincial roads, shouldn’t they? Why then is there a government grant called Transport Infrastructure Maintenance Function Grant, going into the provincial government coffers while nothing is being done to fix the portholes?
A good question for Honorable Luther Wenge his fellow Morobean leaders.
The MPA for this grant is strictly for provision of operational materials and supervisional costs incurred in the operation of village courts.
Are village courts functional and convened regularly in your village? If not, and if the reason is because there is no funds to pay for operational costs, you have to ask why this is the case, when there is a government grant for this purpose.
The MPA for this grant is exclusively to pay the allowance of village court officials.
Do you know a village court official that has not been paid his allowance? Tell us his story.
Primary Production Function Grant.
The main MPA for this grant is extension services in fisheries, agriculture, forestry and livestock. It covers activities such as extension services in agriculture, fisheries, forestry and livestock, which includes farmers trainings, extensions services to farmers and the distribution of seeds and other technologies to farmers and fishermen. The aim is to develop primary and export commodities.
There should not be any excuse for lack of training of local farmers, provision of extension services and other assistance to farmers because the costs of delivering these goods and services are catered for by this grant.
Other Service Delivery function grants
This grants covers costs from other sectors not covered by the main function grants, including community development, natural resource management, and business development and lands administration.
Any community development initiatives in your area can have government support apart from aid assistance from donors through non-governmental agencies. Ask your provincial government to assist you. They have the money for this purpose.
Bougainville
The Autonomous Region of Bougainville receives a different 3 sets of funding. The General recurrent goods and services grant, a police goods and services grant and a National powers and functions grant. Attempts to obtain clarification on the specifics and MPAs of grants given to the Autonomous Region of Bougainville are currently being pursued.
If you would like to know the precise amounts allocated and percentage released to each provincial and local level government for the first quarter of 2010, please click the pdf link below.
Read and ACT NOW! - pursue your provincial and local government agencies if you don't see changes.