Parliament is still grappling in 2026 with municipal reports dating back to 2018, a situation Member of Parliament Manoa Kamikamica has blamed on years of weakened municipal governance and a breakdown in local accountability structures. Speaking during debate on the Labasa Town Council 2018 Annual Report, Kamikamica said the backlog was not a simple administrative oversight but the cumulative effect of past decisions that removed elected town councils and, with them, experienced personnel.
“All the experienced people who were in those town councils got removed progressively,” Kamikamica told the House, arguing that the incremental removal of seasoned officials left local bodies “shadows of their former self.” He said the loss of institutional memory and oversight capacity contributed to chronic delays in financial reporting, forcing Parliament to discuss outdated documents years after the fact. The 2018 Labasa report under discussion is one such example.
Kamikamica also warned that basic administrative functions have suffered amid the governance decline. He pointed to the collection of rates as an area “affected,” and said arrears were now “excessively high” across town councils without exception. Those arrears, he said, undermine municipalities’ ability to fund services and compound the difficulties of returning accounts to order.
Despite the stark assessment, Kamikamica said efforts are underway to tackle the backlog. He told Parliament the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) is collaborating with the relevant minister to put measures in place so that future parliamentary scrutiny will not be forced to engage with reports “in seven years or over.” The PAC’s work to tighten reporting timelines and clear outstanding accounts has been presented as a priority for restoring municipal accountability.
The debate in Parliament builds on earlier calls for stronger municipal governance. In 2025, Local Government Minister Maciu Nalumisa urged council leaders to adopt a more business-like approach to operations to reduce dependence on central government and improve service delivery. That push for professionalised administration and financial sustainability now serves as contextual background for the PAC’s current drive to remedy long-standing reporting failures.
There are signs of progress. Kamikamica noted that some councils have remedied their position — Rakiraki, he said, is now up to date with its accounts. But he framed such recoveries as uneven and insufficient to compensate for the systemic erosion that produced the present backlog. The debate over the Labasa 2018 report—and Parliament’s need to consider documents nearly a decade old—highlights the long tail of governance changes and the urgency faced by oversight bodies to re-establish timely financial reporting at the municipal level.
As PAC and ministerial efforts continue, the issue remains whether reforms will quickly restore the administrative capacity lost over previous years and reduce arrears that constrain councils’ operations. The parliamentary airing of the 2018 Labasa report underlines the practical consequences of weakened local governance and sets a benchmark for expected improvements in municipal accountability.