K300m to concrete Lae city roads

mlipen National, Normal

THE concreting of more than 30km of road in Lae city will cost about K300 million, according to an analysis by a civil works engineer.
The National Government would be spending that amount of money to fix 30-40km of roads for a total population of 600,000 people.
Earlier this year, Works and Transport Minister Don Polye asked  the Government for the K300 million.
These roads served the country’s 6.5 million population, Northern and Islands regional works manager Brian Alois said.
Governor Luther Wenge  recently proposed the idea of having all roads in the city cemented.
“The idea is good but could prove to be a very expensive exercise and would cost both the National and provincial governments hundreds of millions of kina,” Mr Alois, who is also Lae branch president of the Institute of Engineers PNG, said
Mr Alois suggested it would be better to use gravel from the Finschhafen district, instead of using concrete for the roads.
“If the Government does have the money to use concrete for all the roads in the city, then it should go ahead with the idea,” he said.
Mr Alois said that the ongoing issue with roads in the city revolved around four key areas – drainage systems, traffic, materials used for road construction and funding.
In the past couple of years, climate change had led to an increase in annual rainfall, he said.
“There has been a need to improve the current drainage systems in the city to help avoid unnecessary run-offs of water that causes road destruction over time.”
Mr Alois said the volume of traffic had also increased tremendously.
Little feeder roads and streets had been continuously used by highway trucks and other much larger vehicles, contrary to normal practice.
Mr Alois said because of traffic congestion on the main roads, trucks had to resort to using the smaller roads.
He said relevant authorities had not taken tough actions against heavy vehicles using roads meant for light trucks and cars.
He said the K7 million allocated by  the provincial government should be done so annually.