A Papua New Guinea academic is asking questions about what happened to the millions of dollars given to MPs to be spent on health.
The money was handed out by Prime Minister James Marape last year, soon after the pandemic started.
Photo: RNZ Pacific/ Koroi Hawkins
He directed that 20 percent of the District Services Improvement Program funds be allocated to MPs to be spent on health.
Then an additional two million kina, $US557,000 dollars, to go to the MPs to spend on the Covid-19 response.
But political scientist at the University of PNG, Michael Kabuni, said there is no information on how, or if, this money was ever spent.
"We know that the money was given to each of these MPs, but we don't know - acquittals are very poor. We don't know how the funds were spent, we may never know how the funds were spent," he said.
Kabuni said giving funds to MPs to disperse of, at their discretion, during a health crisis, is highly problematic.
Particularly he said because the government's transparency and accountability measures have been suspended during the pandemic, supposedly to expedite the response.
Kabuni said the practice of allocating discretionary funds to MPs should be abolished.
The funds have long been controversial but Kabuni said prime ministers tended to use them to keep their governments together.
But he said the money could be better used by providing it through the normal bureaucreatic channels.
"The evidence that we have is it's not working. The best way is to put the money into existing bureaucracies. So if it is a road we are concerned about, put the money into the Department of Works, if it is health we are concerned about, put the money into the Department of Health," he said.
