District aims to fix roads

 By JAMES APA GUMUNO

THE Mendi district administration, in Southern Highlands, is taking cost-cutting measures to save money to fix its deteriorating feeder roads, a cabinet minister says.

The district spent more than K700,000 on a new quarry in Upper Mendi.

Local MP and Works and Implementation Vice-Minister De Kewanu said the district would save a substantial amount of money when they started to build the roads.

Kewanu, who comes from a private sector background, said he wanted to minimise the cost of service delivery in the district and save money to deliver other services to the people.

He said to get quarry service from Meki, in Imbonggu district, was an expensive exercise as well as time consuming. He said one dump truck would make two-three loads per day but with the new quarry, it would make more than 20 loads a day.

Kewanu said one of the two PC200 excavators the district bought had already cut the benches and built a road connecting the main road into the quarry site over the past seven months.

“If I were to hire a private excavator machine to build the access road and develop the quarry, it would cost the district millions of kina,” he said.

Kewanu said the quarry would be used to maintain all the feeder roads and the Mendi-Tambul road sealing, for which the tender was out two weeks ago.

Kewanu said that quarry was a blessing for the people and expected it to last for about 15 years.

He said the district would use its own machines to get work done on the road but if other construction companies wanted to use the quarry, the district would charge them per load basis.