Paper focuses on employment issues in road construction

The Papua New Guinea National Research Institute (PNG NRI) has released its new issues paper.
The paper titled Road construction employment in Papua New Guinea, focuses on employment issues in construction and maintenance of non-national roads in five different provinces – Madang, Eastern Highlands, Gulf, Milne Bay and New Ireland.
It is based on consultations with sub national governments, private contractors and training providers in these provinces.
The paper discusses the employment opportunities road construction provides to rural Papua New Guineans especially from communities’ close to the project sites. It states that most employment opportunities are short term and very few Papua New Guineans, mostly male, build a career in construction industry. The quality of formal training is generally poor and as a result, few Papua New Guineans have formal qualifications
in the field.
The paper concludes that the increasing number of foreign construction companies operating in PNG has become a concern in all case study provinces because foreign companies often bring bulk of their workforce from overseas, even for lower skilled positions.
This practice seriously affects employment opportunities for Papua New Guineans to work in road construction and maintenance projects.
This paper aims to fill in a gap in the literature by investigating road employment in private businesses and government departments, labour supply, skill shortages, the role of provincial Labour Offices and the employment of foreign workers in PNG.
The paper was written by authors;
Dr. Carmen Voigt-Graf, visiting Research Fellow at the Development Policy Centre, Mathew Dornan, Research Fellow and Deputy Director of the Development Policy Centre, Ronald Sofe, Research Fellow at the PNG NRI, and Chris Banga, Research Project Officer at the PNG NRI.