Public servants in PNG were reminded of their privileges and responsibilities to the rest of Papua New Guinea during their annual dedication service held at the Sir John Guise Stadium on 31st January in Port Moresby.
Minister for Public Service, Soroi Eoe, urged the public servants to know and fear God so that they can be good stewards of resources at their disposal, including time management and financial accountability.
“Because if you don’t know God you don’t know your responsibilities. There’s no commitment. You cannot have that challenge of stealing money, the challenge of coming late, or just coming in because you want to be seen to be signing attendance record to look good but where is your productivity: these are challenges that we face.”
Eoe said to get out of this lack of productivity, the responsibilities lie with individuals. And that challenge is to make a commitment to God.
In addition, Prime Minister James Marape said there are about 300,000 public servants in total, which is less than 4 percent of the total population of 8 billion people. However, this percentage consumes over 50 percent of the total budget in this country.
“3.75 percent of us consume over 50 percent of the K18 billion budget we pass this year, last year for this year or every budgets we pass since 1976 up to today. Sit back and digest this,” stated the PM.
“I spoke to you in these statistics before in this auditorium, in this forum as finance minister, in one or two occasions I wasn’t directly invited but by my participation here I spoke.
“Today I speak to you as your Prime Minister. I want each and every one of you to sit back and imagine this, that we together in total consume over 50 percent of money found in this country; under 4 percent of Papua New Guineans consume about 50 percent.”
(Minister for Public Service, Soroi Eoe)