Oro Governor Gary Juffa has called for a “hard reset” of Papua New Guinea’s public service, warning that the current system is bloated, undisciplined and draining the country’s resources.
Speaking at the launch of the National Monitoring and Coordination Authority (NMCA) at APEC Haus in Port Moresby, Mr Juffa said decades of mismanagement and structural decay have left the public sector incapable of executing even the most basic government directives.
He argued that the problem is not a lack of plans or policies, but an entrenched culture of inefficiency, poor structuring, and inadequate resourcing. According to Mr Juffa, the deterioration of service delivery accelerated after the 1995 public service reforms, which he says weakened institutional accountability and created fertile ground for waste and corruption.
The Governor highlighted the Auditor-General’s 2018 findings, which identified 1,419 state entities — a number that has since increased. He said the unchecked expansion has created an unwieldy bureaucracy that consumes more than half of PNG’s annual budget.
“With 51 per cent of the national budget going to the public sector, it’s time we demand value for money,” Mr Juffa said. “The Deloitte payroll audit in 2023 revealed payroll leakages of up to 26 million kina every fortnight. Those deliberately siphoning public funds must be held accountable.”
Mr Juffa proposed that the NMCA be jointly overseen by both the Prime Minister’s Office and Parliament, with the Special Parliamentary Committee on Public Sector Reforms made permanent to ensure independence and authority. He also called for a full diagnostic review of all state entities, benchmarking them against international standards and restructuring them to fit PNG’s needs.
He said reform must be comprehensive and aggressive, not piecemeal, if the public service is to deliver “world-class service” to Papua New Guineans.