O’Neill unveils 80km road to link North Fly, Telefomin

 THE Telefomin and North Fly districts in West Sepik and Western will be connected by road. 

The link is the long-awaited infrastructure for the Telefomin people. Access into the district has only been by air. Their dreams were realised and their prayers answered when Prime Minister Peter O’Neill launched the construction of the Tabubil-Telefomin Road in North Fly’s mining township of Tabubil on Monday. The road will stretch more than 80km from Ok Menga in North Fly to Telefomin. 

O’Neill presented an initial payment of K5 million to the contractor, Curtain Brothers, to start working. He said the Government had put in K10 million for the road construction with the support of Ok Tedi Mining Ltd (OTML) through the Tax Credit Scheme. “More funding will be given next year and in 2017 so that our dream of hooking up many missing links inside the country must be realised. Our country will soon turn 40 years as an independent state but many places are still remote,” O’Neill said. 

“But the Government is now starting to link them up. In just two years, it has changed the country, no other Government has ever done that.” O’Neill said the infrastructure sector was allocated more than K2 billion in next year’s budget and this  included education and health.

Telefomin MP Solan Mirisim was full of praise for the Prime Minister. 

He said people had waited for the road for more than 30 years and it had finally been delivered. Mirisim used the occasion to make several proposals to the Government which included the start of the Frieda mining project before 2017, if Telefomin could benefit from the non-CMCA funds from OTML and if the percentage of OTML’s Tax Credit Scheme be increased from 1 to 2%.

He said the Frieda mining project and assistance from OTML would help change Telefomin in terms of benefits and service delivery.