The Western Highlands Provincial Health Authority (WHPHA) is one of several government departments and agencies that use the PNG Government Accounting System (PGAS).
It has now decided that the system be made transparent to allow senior executives and managers to check their respective budgets to ensure there are sufficient funds available before making any commitments to spend.
It recently engaged a PGAS administrator from the National Department of Finance to install 10 terminals in selected offices to enable these officers access to information on their budget and how they are spent.
The terminals have been installed in the offices of the Chief Executive Officer and several other senior officers and these terminals have been connected to the organization’s main computer system or server to enable easy access to the PGAS system.
Director Corporate Services, Julie Bengi revealed this recently when explaining the financial crisis the country was facing and how it was impacting on the operations of the Provincial Health Authority.
She said the Management of the WHPHA was doing its best to manage the limited financial resources properly and spend it on essential services which would benefit the public who seek our care and attention.
Ms. Bengi said transparency of the PGAS system was to enable everyone to see where the organization’s financial resources were being spent so that no-one has any doubts about the use of these funds.
“We have a mandate to deliver services to our people and we want to do it in a transparent way. Transparency is what this is all about – people seeing our decisions on how we manage and spend our financial resources to benefit them”, she said.
She added that the PGAS system was assisting the organization to achieve accountability and transparency in a more transparent way and enabling the people to see where funds were being spent – whether they were being spent in priority areas or not and she was happy for the installation of the system.
The Finance Department’s Manager for PGAS Development, Mathias Luke who installed the terminals said the system was good as it allowed users to excess it through the internet to receive and send financial reports.
He said the system installed at the WHPHA was the latest which had been upgraded to version 24 and was virus-free and easy to run.
