Caption: IDA MD John Kaio
By MATTHEW VARI
REHABILITATION efforts underway along the major economic highway of the country, the Highlands Highway, have been hindered with a host of issues, as explained by the Managing Director for the Infrastructure Development Authority (IDA) John Kaio.
His comments were made during his presentation on the progress of the Highlands rehabilitation and construction efforts during the launch of the Department of Works and Implementation 2015 road plan that IDA has been tasked to head.
“The highlands highway is an ongoing program that is actually consists of reconstruction and rehabilitation starts from Morobe and goes into Komo goes into Enga and back to the Western Highlands Province,” Mr Kaio said.
He mentioned a host of factors that have been contributed to by various factors including landowner issues and contractual negligence issues along with standards and natural factors.
“We are having issues with the highlands highway; some issues affecting the highway include the quality of work, contractor performance, and the landowner issues are also a major factor hindering the work on the highway with the continues interference by landowners.”
“As a result the impact and sustainability issues are a concern with this year alone the maintenance cost of the highlands highway using the government tax credit scheme will be going up to K200 million.
He also raised the issue of specification that he said were out of date and not on par with the changing trends in the sector.
“Specifications out of date that is why we have experienced the incompetency of the contractors as well as the consultants,” Mr Kaio said
Kaio also revealed that the IDA through the Department of Works had engaged a contract to provide a lasting solution to infamous sections of the highway in the Simbu province which were unstable sections of the highway.
“We have talked about re-routing the road, but we feel that we need to have informed data to inform ourselves, so we are putting up K5 million for the investigation to be done by an Israeli company,” Kaio said.
“We will get some of the best geotechnical engineers, and will do this using satellite imaging to get real time data so we can see the soil structure to be able to design and either re-route or effectively reinforce according to the data we will get for an informed decision.”
“As soon as that investigation is done our aspiration is that to have design plans and construct on that very tough section.”
Prime Minister Peter O’Neill in his address at the launch also raised concerns on the section mentioned and proposed to the Department of Works.
“Certain sections of the Highlands highway need our immediate attention; most critical is the Simbu section and the border of Western and Easter highlands,” the PM said.
“Our government is proposing to the Works Department to go to an open tender to invite contractors to come and design finance and construct.”
“That is the only way we can immediately have a world class contractor to come in- the government through its budgetary process will make a yearly commitment to making sure that we pay the financial component of that.”
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