Don’t disgrace our departed leaders
LET us not argue about whether the highway is the Okuk Highway or not.
Rather, I want to ask Papua New Guineans who live along the highway: What do you care about the highway?
Every year, people loot transport that become stranded along the highway, and every day we read about people demanding compensation for a landslip, buses are held up, people are robbed, women are attacked.
The late Sir Iambakey Okuk would never allow this sort of thing to happen.
Why put his name to shame on a road that brings nothing but a huge maintenance and compensation bill?
Please do not embarrass Sir Iambakey’s name.
And why did the Government name the highway after Sir Iambakey if it is not willing to maintain it?
Why associate the honourable man with potholes, landslides, armed robberies, looting, compensation, and the list gathers momentum each year?
Sir Iambakey would never have approved this.
Look at the Sir John Guise Drive and the stadium by the same name.
Look at the Sir Hubert Murray Stadium, Sir Ignatius Kilage Stadium, Sir Wadeva Lareva and the list again goes on.
These are all great men who contributed immensely to our country and yet, we – our Government and our people – name monuments to their memory and let them rot away.
We should stop naming public property, roads, bridges, stadiums and streets after deceased leaders until we learn to maintain and look after these places.
In death, the memory of our leaders, need to be respected too.

Big Pat, Miaru River, Gulf of Papua
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