Increase at the expense of essential services to the people

Dear Editor,

Wednesday 17 edition of the Vanuatu Daily Post carried a rather unpopular news article on the government’s plan to increase the MP allowance from 200,000 Vatu to 366,667 Vatu.

In that same edition there were two other health related news. The first one is there is a team of medical specialist touring Vanuatu hospitals discovering that Vanuatu hospitals are lagging behind other Melanesians countries when it comes to adequate emergency services of our hospitals. The second health related news is that NDH is running out of medicine and patients are forced to buy them from Luganville pharmacies.

Now you don’t need a university degree to see what I am seeing here. On one hand you have the MPs saying we want more money to satisfy our political cronies and on the other hand you have one of the most essential services of the country struggling, to provide medicine to the people of Vanuatu. If you ask my opinion I would rather put money toward health services because that is what most of those greedy MP’s promised during their political campaigns, rather than giving the MPs an increase of allowance for which there will be no accountability.

Personally I don’t think its right to use public funds to give an unjustifiable increase to MPs at the expense of very much needed services to the general population of Vanuatu. Generally speaking people who run to MPs and ask for a free hand outs are normally people who vote for him.

So realistically speaking politicians created that problem themselves. As pre -campaign preparation MPs would lure the people into their camp with gifts to win their favour, so when a person wins the election and became an MP his voters felt they had the right to dig into MP’s pocket.

What more do you expect, you created that dependence mentality that is why they will keep coming to you for financial assistance.

In the light of what I have just said, do you think it is right to use public funds to pay for unwarranted increase of allowance to MPs when you already know there will be no accountability to the use of money? On the other hand let essential services to the general population stagger and struggle. I will let you decide on which is the best option, but it is my prayer that the Lord will help our leaders make a rationale decision that benefits the whole country rather than just a few.

Nos Terry
Suva, Fiji