Budget more for road links

By STARZA PAUL
THE national government must budget more money for infrastructure developments in the country to meet the demand of the mining and petroleum boom, senior statesman Sir Matiabe Yuwi says.
Sir Matiabe said in Port Moresby on Monday that remote areas needed road access and the government needed to spend millions of kina to make sure they benefit from incoming major projects.
“I’m calling especially on the Hela, Southern Highlands and the Enga provincial governments and the national government to put aside more money to link the rural areas so that they can benefit from services being provided,” he said.
He said through a connection of roads to remote communities, other basic services such as health and education could be delivered to disadvantaged villages.
“Building and maintaining of infrastructure around the country must become the priority of the O’Neill government because other basic services can only reach these locations if there is access,” Sir Matiabe said.
“These three highlands provinces need to further broaden the existing major roads because in the next three to four years a lot of heavy and light vehicles will be using these roads when the LNG project and the other exploration companies like Mt Kare mining kick off their projects.
“The government must understand that local business houses, churches, provincial administrations and the ordinary people use these same roads to conduct their everyday business and it will become a problem if the roads are not upgraded quickly,” he said.
He urged the government to plan ahead to meet these demands as the country “will not be like it used to be when the major multi-million kina projects like the LNG project actually goes into production in 2014”.