Yellow colour to make a return
WE would hear the engine first. Our eyes would scan the horizon until we saw the cloud of dust which confirmed that a vehicle was heading our way.
There would be excited chatter among those of us waiting for the few vehicles which represented the only means of transportation to some urban centre for whatever business we were conducting.
Then somebody would cry out: “Government car. Government car” and you would hear disappointed grumblings from those assembled.
The reason why anybody could tell from a fair distance that the vehicle was a Government car was the colour yellow.
Yellow was the colour people identified with Government. Yellow was the colour of the Works Department.
When a landslide or floods destroyed roads and bridges, that is when the emergence of a yellow vehicle brought excitement, pleasure and praises for the Government.
In those remote locations, both in the past and today, the Government’s presence is often one individual in the person of a teacher or health orderly or in the arrival of a Works plant or transport.
For 10 years now, the colour yellow has been absent from both rural and urban settings.
By national government edict in 1995, the Plant and Transport Branch of the Department of Works was dissolved and all its staff was made redundant and functions and funding transferred or diluted into the operations of the Works Department.
PTB assets, although ordered to be sold, mostly fell into disuse and their value depreciated over the years.
This was the height of the rationalisation and privatisation era. The Government reasoned the PTB was cumbersome. It reasoned that its duties and responsibilities could be better performed by the private sector construction industry.
Many years later, the Government discovered to its regret that not everything could be done by the private sector, especially in rural, and particularly least developed settings.
In October 2003, at the instigation of former Works minister Gabriel Kapris, cabinet rescinded the decision of 1995 and approved the reviving and reorganisation of the PTB.
Unfortunately it took three further years before that decision could be effected.
Last Thursday in Lae, Works, Transport and Civil Aviation Minister Don Polye launched a revitalised new look PTB.
It was a brief occasion, witnessed by a select few but its impact will be felt right throughout PNG. The colour yellow is back.
While there is a case to be made that where there is capacity the Government should give the job to the private sector, there is an even bigger reason to argue in favour of the Government maintaining a PTB.
There is almost nil private sector capacity in rural areas. Where there is some capacity, the private sector is loathed to commit very expensive machinery unless there is big budget work. Yet often the work entails a fallen bridge or clearing a landslide.
This is where the PTB is invaluable.
When the PTB was abolished, many Members of Parliament used their electoral funds to purchase earth moving machinery and set up carpentry workshops to maintain infrastructure in their electorate.
With no maintenance, these heavy equipment are today rusting away in rural locations throughout PNG.
PTB comes in very handy in times of natural or man-conditioned disasters and emergencies.
The recent Southern Highlands State of Emergency and the Oro flood disaster has taught PNG two very expensive lessons in not maintaining its own fleet of heavy and light vehicular equipment.
Costs, which skyrocketed, could have been halved had the PTB been operational.
The revitalised PTB will operate its own trust account. It is envisaged that it will become self financing through its operations.
The Japanese government has offered to buy machinery at a cost of US$9.8 million for purchase of heavy equipment which will be placed in in Port Moresby, Lae, Mt Hagen and Kimbe.
The PTB has workshop facilities in 13 provinces. It employs well over 290 employees.
The private sector’s capacity to take over PTB functions in the country and especially in the rural areas is limited.
Of some 114 heavy equipment machinery in the charge of PTB, 97 vehicles need major or minor maintenance because of the long period of disuse.
These equipment, as well as those purchased by the Japanese, will be placed in strategic locations in the four regions of the country to carry out emergency repairs to national roads in the event of natural disasters as well as assisting in the effective implementation of the Government’s capital works and maintenance programme in provinces where there is lack of private sector construction industry capacity.
PTB will also maintain a core fleet of pool vehicles including VIP vehicles to enable departments the occasional casual hire particularly by Police, Correctional Services and other essential Departments.
All light vehicles on permanent hire to Government departments will be transferred to the respective departments so that the operation and maintenance of those vehicles become the responsibility of those departments.
The PTB will, however, now become a centralised Plant and Vehicle Procurement Agency for departments with the exception of Defence and commercial statutory authorities.
This will end past practices where each department would go for the latest model of whatever vehicle make that suited them.
What remains to be done is to reintroduce the tax exempt status of the PTB which was withdrawn in 1994.
It would also make economic sense to reintroduce PTB’s own fuel bowsers as in the past.
It is important to conclude with minister’s words: “All these reorganisation would be useless if there is no change is the work attitude and culture.”
He said the revitalised entity would only succeed if the manpower took on a totally new approach to work, ever conscious of the knowledge based globalised economy that PNG was in; to adopt private sector culture but deliver a public sector service as it were.
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