A few years back, a high school teacher in one of Oro Province’s most rural high schools (Bareji High) was on pay, teaching. Later it was revealed that he didn’t have any qualifications to teach.
Just this year, a consultant was hired by the Oro Provincial Government. Because of the tireless efforts of Sunday Bulletin’s journalist Simon Eroro, it was revealed that the consultant didn’t possess any qualifications for the job he was doing.
In fact he was using the transcript of a female student from UPNG. Somehow he had his face on the transcript in place of her face, and had his name over her name. He was dumb to have the same student ID. Investigations showed that the ID belonged to a female student.
These two individuals made an attempt to provide some services, questionable though, because they didn’t possess the required qualifications. But there are people who get paid for not doing any work.
In 2018, the then Public Service Minister Minister Kapavore told NBC News that PNG had 4000 “ghost names” on payroll. People who don’t work but get paid. We don’t know if these people were removed. The public service salary consumes the highest budget in PNG: not law and order, not education etc.
Let’s go back to Oro Province’s case and see what the Provincial Government should have done differently to avoid being fooled by fraudsters.
First, how was the consultant hired? Did the employers ask for a reference? What does his CV say? Did they call his past employer? Consultancy is premised on exceptional knowledge, which means there has to be years of accumulation skills. These are so basic so I understand if you take this as an insult to your intelligence. But it’s just how low the bar is for public service employers.
Second, the Oro Provincial Government have even done better had they called the University of Papua New Guinea, and asked the particular school he claimed to have graduated from to forward his transcript instead of relying on the copy he attached on his application.
In fact, this year (2020), the Morobe Provincial Government called PNG universities and cross-checked the qualifications of their employees to make sure they had the same GPA as those which appears on their transcripts, and that they are graduates of these universities. The PNG public service has to conduct nationwide background checks of their employees.
If you do a simple math on how much we’ve spent on the 4000 ghosts over the years it’s mind boggling.
Let’s make a conservative estimate. If the ghosts get paid K1000 every fortnight, that’s K4, 000, 000 (K4 million).
K4 million x 26 fortnight in a year is K104 million. Over 5 years, PNG paid K520 million to ghosts.
Half a billion kina paid to ghosts. Gosh we love ghosts. PNG is the most spiritual country even ghosts get paid! That’s not counting entitlements, gratuities, and other allowances.
There are things that don’t need a loan to solve it. Doesn’t need aid to solve it. Doesn’t need China or Australia to solve it. It needs common sense.
How many of you think that it would be unnecessary to ask for a loan, if we saved half a billion over the last 5 years?
We don’t need rock star politicians with large social media followers, or convenient, scripture-quoting prime ministers. We just need practical leaders who do the simple things right.
Academia Nomad 