Investment strategy planned to manage road funding

WORKS and Implementation Secretary David Wereh says the national government funding for roads and bridges has increased significantly over the last five years.
He said this during a workshop on the National Road Network Strategy 2018 to 2040 in Port Moresby yesterday.
Wereh admitted that the only issue was with the alignment of this funding into non-priority areas and as part of addressing the issue, the Works Department would come up with a long term investment strategy to ensure funding was tied to priority areas going forward.
“Over the last five years, funding has increased but aligning this funding to our priorities has been the problem.
“We are still doing some non-priority roads with the limited funding that we have.
“But in the last five years, I think the key high-impact priority of the Government is on the Lae city roads and we have turned the Lae city roads into standard concrete roads and also delivered more than 800 metres of bridges over the last five years.
“And these are double-lane standard bridges and they include the ones on Magi and Hiritano Highways, West New Britain Highway, Boluminski Highway, and in the Oro province.  And we have also been able to keep about 4,000 km of the national highways in accessible condition, cutting down the delays and keeping traffic moving every day,” Wereh said.
He said these achievements were made basically because of increased funding from the National Government and development partners over the last five years.
“There’s been an unprecedented increase in funding over the last five years and that’s the kind of funding that we are looking at to align on our priority areas to make a difference in what we are doing.”