By admin
Acting Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare has encouraged Members of Parliament to retire their Rural Constituency Development Funds, RCDF.
Winding his Motion of Adjournment yesterday, Mr Sogavare concurred with sentiments echoed by the Member of Parliament for East Honiara, Douglas Ete.
Mr Ete in his brief contribution to the motion, revealed a total of twenty-six million dollars was not used by MPs last year due to lack of fund retirements.
Concurring with Mr Ete, Acting Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare urged Members of Parliament to retire their RCDF.
“And I would encourage and I think the point raised is very important with this retirement. Please do it, there’s number of constituencies that are unable to retire their funds for almost two to three years so when you fail to retire the funds, you won’t be able to get the the funding to support people and so sometimes it halted the release of these funds because we have to wait for them.
“Lately we’ve decided not to wait for those Members of Parliament because it seems they are not interested in the funds so we move on. And so with the figures the Member of Parliament for East Honiara revealed as still outstanding, it will have to be like that.”
Mr Sogavare appealed to the MPs to comply with what is required of them.
“Please I encourage us it’s a program that we come with and it lasts for a number of years now. More than ten years now, increasing direct assistance to our constituencies is one of the things that happened because we support the development aspirations and involvement of our people in the constituency through that fund.
“Retirement is something that we need to remind our colleagues to do.”
By: Rickson Bau
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