DEAR EDITOR, I have been waiting patiently for my loan for almost two months now. SIPEU keep on saying that next week, next week! I am left confused.

Please credit committee show some commitments to the people whom you serve. Enough of this $500 sitting allowance.

My saving should be rightly available for me when the need arises.

The fund has been there for many years and the construction of the box SIPEU house shouldn’t be an excuse for funds depletion.

Take for instance for every paydays (monthly) an average of $250 saving X 1000 workers equate to a quarter million SBD deposits excluding the 5 percent interest paid by members for their advances.

A general meeting for its members is yet to be done so as the financial status update of the saving.

This is people’s money and its dealings has to be disclosed to its rightful owners.

Where investments are made and returns are made must be made to its owners. This is another saving club like the NPF.

But the difference is that with NPF, Contribution are given electrically to its members, SPO returns are published and so forth.

I think SIPEU should be better off since individual investments on average is more compared to NPF, if I am right.

The credibility of NPF is through the strive by the workers themselves. Creativity and taking initiative to make a change in the organisation.

With SIPEU, the problem was created by taking on board incompetent workers. Are we employing this workers on merit basis?

We should only have one teller lady there to stamp and give out advances.

The rest should be well trained people who are vigilant in their hunt to grow the investment.

A manager who has the vision for the fund must be put in place before we encounter the similar fate of the police saving club.

All that is happening behind the SIPEU doors now is usual old fashion working style.

Even with simple desk customer service was lacking as well. Once I asked for the status of my loan and the reply was, “we give priorities for school fees”.

Where on earth did you take that answer?

I am loaning against my share. I have contributed over 10 years and this is what you have to tell me.

To conclude, an audit to the saving must be immediately carried out and financial statements must be made to the members.

Qualified people must be taken on board and rid-off the unproductive bunch.

Deebonz

Honiara

DEAR EDITOR, I wish to respond to the above call and demand by Reginald Ngati as appeared in the Monday, April 2, issue of the Island Sun newspaper.

The audit of the 2013 – 2016 SINU Accounts (which includes the SINUSA funds) is completed by the Office of the Auditor General.

Reginald Ngati and his group are welcome to view the report from the university Finance Department.

Accounts for 2017 are also being prepared by the Accounts Department for submission to the Office of the Auditor General.

Likewise and in keeping with the spirit of the above call by Reginald Ngati, I am also asking him to provide an acquittal report of the funds below that was released to them from the SINUSA funds held with the Finance Department during their five months term (November 2017 – February 2018) in office.

Please see the table below for more information.

Donald Malasa

Former Pro Vice-Chancellor [Corporate]

Solomon Islands National University

DEAR EDITOR, Ms Ruth Liloqula, the chair of Transparency Solomon Islands (TSI) in recent days told the SIBC and Radio New Zealand International that allegedly local MPs are using foreign aid and development projects to divert public attention away from the misuse of domestic funds.

While she was reportedly not criticising overseas development partners and welcomed their assistance, she was essentially claiming MPs were allegedly using deflection tactics about the use of the multi-million dollar constituency development funds (CDF) from Taiwan over which they had complete control.

What constitutes constituency development?   Given that 87 percent of the rural population in the Solomon Islands are going without access to proper health care due to the almost derelict state of the rural health care clinics, I would assume that the re-building or substantial repairs of those clinics would fall within the definition of “constituency development.”

If I am right, then prima facie it does not seem either foreign aid development or money from the CDF is doing anything to improve the situation and one learns almost daily of one or more rural health clinics in such a poor state that the local community are essentially deprived of their human rights to health care.

If Ms Liloqula’s commentary does anything to influence a change in the Solomon Islands and there is more targeted use of the CDF towards the rural population then the government and MPs must be fully cognisant health as a human right creates a legal obligation on the state to ensure access to timely, acceptable health care.

In addition, a state’s obligation to support the right to health includes the allocation of maximum available resources, and that must surely mean functioning rural health clinics and facilities.

Yours sincerely

FRANK SHORT

DEAR EDITOR, when Solomon Islands Finance Minister, Manasseh Sogavare, handed down this year’s $4.068 billion budget in parliament last week he said the government expected to collect more money during 2018 with 3.5 billion of the total budget being sourced locally from import duty on fuels and from withholding tax.

Mr. Sogavare also said “Given our current situation and the limited availability of information on the progress of many ongoing projects, the Government has made a concerted effort to defer and delay several non-performing projects, which realistically won’t be executed or completed successfully in the remaining 8 months of the year.

“We are trying to deliver a credible and realistic budget for 2018; therefore all budgetary allocations have to be supported with some assurance that the resources that have been targeted will be delivered successfully.”

It seems unrealistic to expect the Solomon Islands government, having reduced its development budget by 52 percent or S639 million in 2018, to give any real attention to the situation prevailing in the rural health sector where the 80 or more percent of rural community dwellers are bereft of essential healthcare access and where nearly all of the rural health clinics are in very poor repair and some already totally collapsed and beyond repair.

The rural health clinics, numbering more than 130 in Colonial times, have been allowed to rot because of decades of under-investment in rural health care and where the heath care of the rural population is supposed to be guaranteed by law.

The Solomon Islands government needs to address the missing rights and to adopt a comprehensive and systematic approach to rural health care.

Given the shortage of money what can the government do?

What about help from the World Bank and Britain’s International Development Agency, DFID? Why these two one might ask?

Well, Britain with its past links with the Solomon Islands and with the soon to be officially opened Solomon Islands diplomatic mission in London might be willing to help through its UK Direct Aid Programme.

The 5 year one hundred and fifty million Direct Aid Programme was launched by the UK Government in 2014 and has reportedly changed the lives of over 3 million of the world’s poorest people since that time in 31 countries.

I query, however, what help the Solomon Islands has had from DFID in terms of helping the most vulnerable in the country’s rural outreaches.

I know, too, that DFID provided five million pounds in 2008 towards a Rural Health Project in China. Yes, China!

The China Rural Health Project was supported by the World Bank and DFID which focused on developing the rural health services and facilities in 40 of China’s provinces.

The World Bank provided a loan of $50 million. It was the 11th health-lending project that the World Bank had supported in China since 1984. Those projects, with total World Bank financing of $973 million, as well as policy studies, have contributed significantly to China’s health service delivery capacity development, major diseases control as well as the health system reforms.

The World Bank is also working closely with the Chinese government in preparing a new lending operation on health reform with the focus being to pilot and establish a people-centered health care delivery system in China. Built on the experiences and lessons of the Rural Health project, the new project will adopt the World Bank’s innovative lending approach, the so-called “Program for Results” instrument.

The World Bank has assisted the Solomon Islands in several ways but not to the extent, as far as I am aware, in directly aiding the rural health needs of the communities suffering from proper health care and facilities.

DFID essentially aims to fund small-and medium sized national and international civil society organizations to reduce poverty and work towards achieving Global Goals. Specifically, UK Aid reaches the most marginalized and vulnerable populations.

DID’s agenda is to ‘leave no one behind.’

With that agenda, I would respectfully ask the UK Government not to leave the marginalized rural communities in the Solomon Islands (denied of their legal rights to health care) behind and to favourably help the Solomon Islands with a Rural Health Service Project, similar to the one supported in China in the past.

I appeal to the World Bank, also, to aid such a project accordingly.

Yours sincerely

FRANK SHORT

DEAR EDITOR, a 20 ft container with 3000 prs of eye glasses from Lions Clubs in New Zealand and furniture, mobility aids, clothing & footwear has arrived in Honiara for distribution to local NGO’s including the SIDT, The Association of Persons’ with Disabilities, Hearts of Hope and the NRH Referral Eye Hospital.

The container, freighted to the Solomon Islands through the kind financial support of the Solomon Islands Forest Association (SFA) and Take My Hands Charity Trust, based in Auckland, is already being unloaded and the much needed items of donated supplies being distributed.

The clothing and footwear is especially needed by the Hearts of Hope Charity on Malaita which cares for more than 1000 young orphans and elderly widows on a daily basis.

FRANK SHORT