Parliament was told today that the money (300 million US dollar loan) obtained from the Asian Development Bank last year is yet to be put to use for the purpose it was obtained for.
This was revealed by the Minister for State Enterprise William Duma after East Sepik Governor Alan Bird queried where the money was and why it was not used to address the ongoing power woes in the country including Wewak town.
Bird said Wewak town has been in the dark for 18 days now and wanted a short-term solution to the power problems there.
Providing a background of the situation on the ground, Bird said a total of six gen sets have failed with a new gen set not working. This has led to power blackouts affecting schools, hospitals, banks, etc.
While calling on Kumul Consolidated Holdings (KCH) and PNG Power to assist, he also pointed them to the loan obtained from ADB last year to help rescue non-performing state-owned entities including PPL.
Minister responsible, William Duma confirmed receiving 250m USD in December last year as part of the SOE reform Loan and explained where this money was.
“My understanding is that the money is being kept and it has not been allocated yet. We have to go through the normal budgetary process before these funds are released not only to KCH but to fund other development agendas of the government.”
Duma added that the National Government had allocated K200m to PPL with K28m released as the final instalment recently but again reasoned out that they are waiting to follow due processes before expanding the monies.
“The final installation of K28m has been released. KCH now has a full complement of K200m that was allocated in the budget.
And as we know, these kind of monies have their own processes to follow. They are public funds, we have to follow normal tender systems and money allocation processes before the funds are fully allocated.”
He said the issues with the gen sets in Wewak were complex and they have engaged expats from Korea to look into it. These ex-pats will fly into Wewak tomorrow to start maintenance work on the gen sets.
He acknowledged the power problems in Wewak were due to both technical and competency issues from workers.