Vanuatu’s Prime Minister Charlot Salwai Tabimasmas has issued instructions for budget allocation for provincial councils to be injected to the provinces under the responsibility of provincial officials.
The directive was issued to all ministries director generals via the DG of the Prime Minister.
The instruction was for the director generals for all government ministries, to issue instructions to their corporate service units to facilitate financial delegation to officers in the provinces. This means giving powers to the most senior officers of a department in each province to sign off on LPO’s in the provinces and this is counter-signed by the secretary general of the provinces.
When Vanuatu gained its independence in 1980 from joint colonial Anglo-French rules, it incepted eleven local government councils to administer the islands. Each local government council had the powers to sign off money injected into its budget by the central government to purchase, acquire, hold, manage and dispose of moveable and immovable property.
The government departments also had their budget allocated for the service they provide to the people. In the 1990’s, further evolution on decentralization eventuated reducing the number of councils to six, Malampa, Penama, Sanma, Shefa, Tafea and Torba, with funds controlled by each departmental headquarters in Port Vila.
In 2002, certain recommendations were made by the Decentralization Review Commission and a lot of work has been done to-date in legislating the necessary governance structure and processes to improve service delivery at the provincial and area council level. A financial service bureau (FSB) for each provinces were also established.
Since the inception of the Salwai coalition government, a 100-day plan was released with goals to achieve within the planned period. That plan also seeks to ensure t5hat decentralization of government services is one of the priorities.
In a directive sent to the DG the Prime Minister’s Office, Johnson Naviti, on Tuesday, 12 April 2016, Prime Minister Salwai noted that not all government ministries that are present in the provinces are utilizing the service provided by the FSB to expedite the delivery of government services to the people in the provinces.
He said appropriation funds passed by parliament for use by government departments in the provinces only looked good on paper but never reached the respected offices in the provinces. “This practice has to stop and this government is committed to ensuring that this is the case,” he said.
Prime Minister Salwai then issued directives to all director generals to issue further instructions to all corporate units to issue financial delegation top officers in the provinces and for this instruction to be counter-signed by the secretary general of the provinces.
The prime minister did not mince his words when he said “evidence should be given to my office, two weeks after receipt of these instructions, to show the movement of funds from head offices to officers based in the provinces, through the FSB’s. Each ministry, upon receipt of these instructions, will provide monthly reports to my office detailing funds expended in each province and the purpose of these expenditures.
He further directed that a copy of the reports be provided to the office of the parliamentary secretary for provincial affairs who has been given the responsibility of fast-tracking the government’s decentralization agenda.