Govt to involve investors in road maintenance program

Prime Minister Peter O'Neill.

By MATTHEW VARI

Sunday, January 29, 2017 (Sunday Chronicle, PNG)

PRIME Minister Peter O’Neill announced approved plans by the national government to collaborate with major resource project investors to maintain key national roads in the country via public private partnership tax credit incentives.

The PM made it known while addressing concerns of a lax in maintenance on vital national road networks that serve existing and upcoming resource projects in the country.

“NEC has decided in order for us to address the continuous maintenance issues of the country’s road networks in our provinces.”

“It is not a new thing that is happening that we should be now on top of it. Continuous neglect by many governments, including ours in the sense because of funding issues because of a lack of attention, many of these roads have not been maintained in an order that is agreeable for our people to use.”

“We are now trying to arranged public private partnership, we have been over the past few weeks talking to some of our major investors in the country who are frequently using these roads,” the PM said.

He made mention of the Ok Tedi mine, Exxon Mobil, and Oil Search as initial partners to partner with the state and manage their respective key roads.

O’Neill took a swipe at the Department of Works, saying its lack of capacity to attend to major problems on national roads as a major contributor to maintenance programs lacking.

“For ma ny years we have been depending on our government employees, particularly from works, but their lack of capacity and of course the lack of attention to immediately attend to problems that the roads are facing in the country has meant that the maintenance programs have been lacking.”

“It is happening all throughout the country. We have heard the concerns of the people in the highways and the towns like Madang and Wewak and cabinet has specific decisions and attention to that.”

“That does not mean that we abandon some of the program that we have ongoing with ADB (Asian Development Bank) or the World Bank.

“In fact this morning (Tuesday January 24) I met with the World bank Director who is visiting our country and they are very agreeable to the proposition that we are making saying that World Bank has got similar arrangements in many other countries in the region that there is an effective maintenance program of roads into the long-term because they are working closely with private sector- the big investors bringing capacity and management skills.”