Papua New Guinea Public Service ‘ROTTING’

By YVONNE HAIP

The habit of receiving and expecting bribes by public servants in the country is eating away the credibility of the public service, a public servant in Western Highlands province has said. In a bold statement about the “rot in the public service”, Mt Hagen urban local level government councillor, Mapun Papol, said ordinary citizens were being forced to pay bribes to those working in high offices to get their inquiries processed faster.

Mr Papol said this was a concern as ordinary citizens did not have to pay anyone who was paid by the Government to deliver services.“If you want something to be done for you, you need to pay bribe or else your enquiry or application will be ignored and then chucked into the bin. Bribery is a secret income for public servants,” he said.He said for this reason, the public service was losing its credibility.

“It is shameful because the people are forced to pay bribe if they want service which is supposed to be received free,” Mr Papol said.He claimed that if people wanted something done, they had to present their inquiries together with some money in order to ‘speed things up’.

Mr Papol said he was in Port Moresby last month to have an application processed and ended up paying K2,000 as bribery to get it done. He called on the Minister for Public Service Peter O’Neill to look into the matter as this was becoming a habit.

*** This is a dangerous trend for Papua New Guinea. I've seen and experienced this myself and we should by all means do everything within our powers to get rid of this 'cult practise' widely prevalent in Papua New Guinea.

Source: The National

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