Hard work paves way for basic services

It is not always the government who has to take responsibility for every hardship being faced in terms of service delivery, but taking initiative to doing your part also counts.
 According to Tom Magari from Domara village, Central, it took only three men’s effort to maintain a section of the Domara Road that was closed for a decade without any funding and assistance from the rest of the community.
Magari Taima, Motu Gabina and James Marai were three elders from Domara village that worked tirelessly to remove debris and mud that blocked a section of the road between More village and Paiono hill when Moreguina River changed its course 10 years ago.
Although, the local MP  Sir Puka Temu allocated K900,000 in this year’s budget and engaged a local contractor to maintain the road, only a quarter of the road of about 10km from George corner to More village was maintained.
The road serving Domara and Duramu community on the other side of the river was left neglected, which the trio took up on themselves to maintain.
The three used garden tools like spades, bush knives and crowbars to dig up and clear the blockade and then cleared logs that lay on the road using a chainsaw and carried loads of stones in rice bags from the nearest creek to fill potholes.
It took the three men exactly one month to complete the work with no help rendered by the community to assist them.
Magari said that though, the rest of the road was good, 10 years of no use had resulted in bush growth and the section that put the rest of the road to no use was identified by the trio who took the initiative to clear up the blockade.
For the past 10 years, people had forgotten the sound of a vehicle engine and on Oct 22, the Duramu and Domara community heard it again as the first vehicle went to the village after so long.
The people had been travelling by boat to Baramauta’a to catch PMV to Port Moresby for the past decade.