BY SAM BASIL MP

YEAR IN YEAR OUT, Papua New Guineans have been crying out for delivery of basic services in health, education, roads, bridges, wharves, airstrips and more but, their wishes have always been that.

There isn’t much that this government can show for the large sums of money it has purported to have spent over the years since it took office. All our public infrastructure and services have fallen into disarray.

Our hospitals, health centers and clinics continue to struggle for the basic of drugs while people, especially the mothers, young and old, continue to die of curable illnesses whilst this government watches.

Most of Papua New Guinea’s schools, universities and colleges have fallen into disrepair despite the allocation of large sums of money over the years.

Mr Speaker, our coastal and maritime provinces continue to be neglected in terms of proper wharves, jetties and the like. Those that are usable are almost collapsing preventing our rural people from bringing their produce safely to the markets.

There are so many other deficiencies in the performance of this government to effectively manage and implement a lot of its money plans which I can continue to talk about but I do believe you all are familiar with.

We strongly believe that this government has failed miserably to implement its past budgets and we believe the 2011 money plan will be no different. It is our strongest conviction that this government lacks the capacity, the willpower and know-how to successfully implement the 2011 money plan.

Mr Speaker, our biggest fear is that a lot of the money that is intended for projects in the 2011 budget will be squandered as was always the case in the past. It is therefore important that all sectors of government be overhauled and this government quickly put in place proper management strategies for this budget to ensure that the people of PNG really benefit from this money plan.

This budget is framed so much around the LNG project but not everyone in PNG will benefit directly from the LNG windfalls. It will only be the landowners around or within the project areas, the pipeline and the processing facility. All Papua New Guineans will however feel the negative impact of this project on their lives through high cost of goods and services brought about by the LNG project.

The people  of PNG are already expressing their concerns about the increased prices of basic store goods. The sad story is that it will get worse. For majority of Papua New Guineans, life will get harder.

In its current form, the Papua New Guinea labor market is competently unable to supply all the labor requirements not only for the PNG LNG project but, also to fill in the vacuum created by movement of people into the resource sector and new jobs created as a result of the resource boom.

Do we always have to play catch up while our people suffer?

The Government doesn’t care Mr Speaker; maybe we all should buy houses in Cairns, catch an early flight into Port Moresby for Parliament Session and afternoon flight back into Cairns.

Yumi giamanim ol pipol istap.

Finally Mr Speaker, it has been alleged that over K5 billion of public funds has been stashed away into trust accounts which have yet to be audited.

This government owes it to its people that a thorough audit must be done quickly and made public so that the people can see how their money has been managed.

PNG has been listed as one of the corrupted countries in the world, unsafe to take a holiday and Member of Parliament are almost immune to prosecution.

This is an edited version of yesterday’s Budget reply speech by Bulolo MP,  Sam Basil, courtesy of the PNG Exposed Blog