Papua New Guinea OPPOSITION Leader Belden Namah has called on Police Minister Bryan Kramer to make public the internal audit he conducted on the K23 million Covid-19 funds. Namah said Kramer had committed himself to completing the internal audit in seven days. It is now more than 21 days. “You can’t make such statements and do the audit (because) you are not an auditor,” Namah said. Kramer told The National last night that he would comment on Namah’s outburst later.
But he had said on April 28 that an external audit would be conducted into the K23mil “should the internal audit show evidence that it had been misused”. It followed allegations of the misuse of the funds circulated on social and mainstream media. Kramer said the K23mil was held in the government’s health services improvement programme (HSIP) trust account. It required that an annual independent audit be conducted in agreement with donor partners. He said the state of emergency executive committee chaired by Prime Minister James Marape had agreed to have it investigated. Namah said yesterday the audit should be done by an independent audit team, and not the police minister. Namah criticised the Government for failing to address the “hot spot” areas by putting more funding into protecting the border provinces. Namah, the Vanimo-Green MP from West Sepik, said Indonesia’s Covid-19 cases were increasing at an alarming rate. “Most of the Covid-19 funding is being wasted in Port Moresby,” he said. “We have been hearing cases of positive, then negative, then positive. “I do not see why the funds are been concentrated too much in Port Moresby.” He said only K2mil was allocated for the border provinces “and that money has not reached us yet”. “We are lucky that we have a provincial government who is working in collaboration with our brothers in the East Sepik government to ensure that our people are protected,” he said. Namah called on the Government to focus on West Sepik and Western who shared land with Indonesia. Meanwhile, Namah also called on security officers on Covid-19 operations at the borders to remember that the state of emergency was “not a security one but a public health one”. “You are there to assist the provincial government and the provincial health authority,” he said. Statement/TheNational/PNGFACTS Next : PM Marape To Release Reports On COVID-19 Funds To The Public Comments are closed.
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