THIS commentary is in respect to your above front page headline in your issue for Tuesday, 01/09/2015.
The fact that the MPs have in a sense been multi-millionaires from tax payers money has been going onfor a long time now.
The recent allocation of national disaster relief funds to the responsibility of MPs further worsened the situation.
Ina politically unstable situation as we have, the government and the Prime Minister are powerless to do anything about correcting this manner of abusing tax payers money.
This is in the cases when the government and or the Prime Minister were genuinely against public funds being dished out in this manner.
Most times, Cabinet and the PM also stand to benefit from decisions for MPs to access more funds.
The political unstable situation means that whenever MPs want these types of avenues to access public funds, the PM and government must grant the MPs wishes or risk losing the numbers to govern.
Many MPs would not want a politically stable government so that they can continue to exert their will over the government and PM.
Any Bills to strengthen the PM and government of the day would not be favourably considered by Parliament.
Political instability and related poor leadership integrity are fundamental reasons why the country has not developed since Independence some 37 years ago.
A cursory look at what the $334million a year for MPs should mean in terms of development is as follows.
There has been absolutely no tangible development so far for Malaita Province since the amount was availed for the MPs of the Province.
There are boats that are bought with the money but these are more likely the business enterprises of the individual MP and his family.
All other needs as schools, clinics, new roads and maintenance of existing ones, and the much controversial so called major projects for the Province continue to be high and dry in terms of funding.
When the $334 million are availed through MPs, it simply disappeared in a big hole as there are no resulting development projects to show for such a huge tax payers money.
At $6.68 million per MP a year, the 13 MPs for Malaita Province would have over $86 million in all for all 13 Constituencies each year.
This is a lot of money for one Province.
Yet there is no sign of any tangible development in any of the 13 Constituencies on Malaita.
If all the $86million are given directly to Malaita Province each year for its development and recurrent programs, the Province would have gone along way in fulfilling its aspirations for its people.
Somehow, the country must get back to trusting the provinces and to give them all the money presently given to MPs so they can develop themselves.
The MPs should focus more on their legislative responsibilities and less on money making schemes aimed at defrauding the public.
