ENB roads to get K300m

By ELIZABETH VUVU
PRIME Minister Peter O’Neill has made a commitment of K300 million for the maintenance of road infrastructure in East New Britain.
Governor Leo Dion said he had been assured by O’Neill, who was recently in the province.
Negotiations are under way to secure funding from donor agencies for the major project.
Dion said he would like to see Watom and Duke of York Islands included in the road submission project.
At Watom on Tuesday during the opening of LLG facilities, Dion urged engineers from national Works and contractors to begin looking at vital road links in the province.
He recently raised concern that the transport infrastructure development and maintenance were critical to the economic growth of the province.
He said in the recent past the province had been unable to carry out maintenance on many existing roads which were falling well beyond the state of repair.
Dion said any funding for maintenance would have to be significant to avoid quick-fix solutions that would achieve poor quality of work that would be very costly in the long-term.
He said the provincial government had given a submission to the national government three years ago for well over K300 million for road  maintenance.
He had earlier said they were now using the Integrated Agriculture projects concept to drive and open up infrastructure development and improve access to markets and improve people’s access to government services.
The 14km missing link from Malasaet to Open Bay of the New Britain Highway, the 2.7km Vulcan Section and the Toma Junction to Ratunur Road that were tendered by the Central Supplies and Tenders Board were either already awarded or awaiting confirmation of funding.