The Public Service Commission has not published an annual report since 2021/22. In the years since, Auditor-General findings and ministries’ own reports have documented recurring failures in financial controls, procurement and record keeping — with little visible evidence of consequence. That gap raises a specific question: is Tonga’s accountability chain still functioning, or has it quietly broken down?
The missing reports
The PSC’s website publishes annual reports only up to the 2021/22 financial year — a three-year gap.
Tonga Independent News wrote to both the Chief Executive Officer of the Public Service Commission and the Chairperson of the Commission, requesting the 2022/23, 2023/24 and 2024/25 reports. The PSC acknowledged the request: “We will look into it and will contact you.” A reminder sent three days later has not been answered. At the time of publication, neither the reports nor an explanation for their absence has been provided.
There are two possible explanations, and they carry very different weight. The reports may exist but simply haven’t been published or supplied to TIN — an administrative lag. Or they may not have been completed at all — meaning the body responsible for overseeing public-service performance has itself fallen years behind on its own statutory obligation. TIN cannot yet determine which is the case, and this article does not assume the more serious explanation is correct. But the distinction matters, because under Tonga’s Public Service Act, the Commission’s Chairman is required to furnish the Prime Minister with a report on the Commission’s operations — and on the efficiency and effectiveness of the Public Service — by the end of May each year. Either explanation is worth a public answer.
What the law asks of PSC
The PSC is not simply another government office managing its own affairs. Under the Public Service Act, it is responsible for monitoring the efficiency and effectiveness of the public service, reviewing management and internal controls within ministries, overseeing the performance-appraisal system, and playing a central role in the appointment and accountability of Chief Executive Officers.
That mandate is what makes the recurring weaknesses documented across ministries directly relevant to an assessment of the Commission itself. Each CEO is legally responsible for the proper, efficient and economic administration of their ministry. When that administration fails repeatedly, the question of responsibility runs upward — to the CEO first, and from there to the body with statutory responsibilities for CEO appointments, performance and public-service management.
The clearest evidence: Internal Affairs
The strongest documentation of this problem comes from the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ own 2024/25 Annual Report — not from inference, but from the ministry’s own figures.
The Ministry spent TOP 27.21 million during the year while completing only around 70 percent of its planned outputs. Against a procurement compliance target of more than 80 percent, it achieved 15 percent. By the ministry’s own account, 85 percent of the procurement activities examined were non-compliant — work beginning before Central Procurement Unit approval, approvals sought retroactively, incomplete documentation, missed contract deadlines, and spending committed ahead of required procedure.
These were not trivial sums. Fencing and upgrade work at the ministry’s former Tonga Water Board premises proceeded before procurement clearance, through payments of TOP 109,500 and TOP 70,000.15. Repair and painting work at the Head Office followed the same pattern, totalling TOP 157,989 and TOP 68,624. No procurement training was conducted during the year.
Set against this record, the ministry’s Human Resources Unit reported receiving a “Green Light” performance assessment from the PSC — the same year the Minister described average staff performance as being in “critical need for improvement.” That contrast is the single most concrete piece of evidence in this investigation: a ministry can fail 85 percent of its procurement compliance checks and still clear its PSC performance review. If that combination is defensible, PSC has not yet explained how. If it isn’t, it points to exactly the enforcement gap this article is asking about.
