28 Jul 2008

Papua New Guinea group calls for action by Ombudsman on corruption

7:35 pm on 28 July 2008

The Ombudsman Commission in Papua New Guinea is being called on to do more to fight corruption.

The re-activated Community Coalition Against Corruption says it is increasingly concerned about the escalating levels of corruption and the lack of action to tackle it.

Its spokesman Mike Manning, who is the chairman of Transparency International in PNG, says there could be a violent public backlash if progress on investigating the allegations of corruptions is not made.

He says the Ombudsman Commission is one agency that should be taking stronger action given it has a number of cases ready to be referred to prosecutors.

"The fact is, I think, that the Ombudsman Commission has referred only one or two people in the first seven months of this year, whilst there have been blatant abuses being reported to it daily. And after a period of time we do want to know that the Ombudsman is in fact operating as efficiently as he can. Sure he is under resourced but maybe they are not using the resources that they have as well as they could, as well, and there is no watchdog of the Ombudsman and that is a bit of a worry."

Mike Manning.