ILO funding 18 road upgrades in Sepik

THE International Labour Organisation (ILO) is funding the upgrading of 18 roads in East Sepik and West Sepik.
It comes under the European Union-Funded Support to Rural Entrepreneurship, Investment and Trade in Papua New Guinea (EU-Streit PNG) programme – the largest EU grant-funded programme in the country.
The ILO has been implementing the transport infrastructure component.
ILO site engineer Cerullo Waranaka said 11 of the 18 roads were being upgraded by contractors while work on the other seven would begin once bidding was done.
“These roads were selected, according to the number of farmers accessing those roads, by the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the leading agency in the Streit PNG programme,” he said.
Waranaka said improving roads would enable farmers involved in cocoa, vanilla and fisheries to take their produce to the market.
“Schools and the public (can) have better road access,” he said.
Specific road maintenance involves contractors while routine maintenance is carried out by the villagers.
One villager is allocated two kilometers of road to clear of vegetation, fix potholes and clear landslides.
“The Nanahatau road in Ambunti-Dreikikier, East Sepik, is one of the 18 roads we are working on – about 14.5km long.
“The contract is around K1.9 million,” he said.
The contractor should complete that road by January next year.
“Even after the contractor is done, the routine maintenance programme will be ongoing and about K1.1 million injection into local economy through this programme in this particular area,” he said.