Papua New Guinea corruption

by Monsters and Critics.com

One third of the Papua New Guinea government's spending goes into the pockets of corrupt officials, an anti-corruption watchdog said Friday.

Mike Manning, the head of the Port Moresby branch of Transparency International, told a conference in the PNG capital that the thieves were being promoted further up the bureaucracy or being elected to parliament rather than being punished.

'Think of how we treat people who are corrupt - we elect them to parliament,' Manning, the former director of the Institute of National Affairs, said. 'Until we impose on people a sense of shame for doing wrong, we are never going to stop corruption.'

Manning, an Australian-born PNG citizen, said that despite endless inquiries into large-scale corruption cases no one had been jailed. Manning told the delegates that corruption meant medicines did not get to clinics, schools went without books, and roads became impassable.