Road network vital for growth

PAPUA New Guinea has a poorly developed road network.
For a country that boasts an abundance of natural resources, the translation to better infrastructure has not been evident.
The extremely mountainous terrain of the country is such that land slips and slides are practically common occurrences.
If it is the Highlands Highway, then movement from the nation’s main port in Lae to the largest Highlands urban centre Mt Hagen and other provincial capitals in Mendi (SHP), Tari (Hela) and Wabag (Enga) are affected.
That would mean containers of goods sitting at the wharf and or on the road side somewhere along the highway waiting for the road to be cleared.
In business, time is money and lost hours are literally Kinas down the drain. It has been happening all too often.
The government has announced it will continue to prioritise the major upgrading of this prime arterial route.
But it is not just the health and well-being of our existing roads that is being called into question but also the fact that many parts of the country are still not yet linked by road.
Take for instance the capital city, Port Moresby. It is disbelieving to think that after 44 years of independence successive governments have failed to look seriously into connecting the national capital with any other major provincial capitals.
Gulf headquarters, Kerema, can hardly be considered a major provincial player at this point although that may change with the development of the Elk gas fields and the downstream processing of Hela and Southern highlands resources.
But these plans are merely pipe dreams until a proper road can be built connecting NCD to Gulf.
The same goes for the rest of the country.
There is no road linking Wewak to Madang’s tourist hot spots on the north coast.
Although engineers and accounts would tell us projects like the linking of Port Moresby with Lae, Mt Hagen and Alotau are not economically and practically feasible given the value – or return on investment – of these projects, we prefer to think that excuse has become redundant in this age.
The money generated from our natural resources can alone easily maintain the current crop of roads and build much needed new ones, but attached to that thinking is the caveat that money must be used effectively and the quality of work must be of international standard.
Lae has taken steps to address its chronic road problem. Being one of the wettest provincial capitals has taken a toll on its road networks.
The re-sealing and upgrading work started with the more durable but comparatively expensive concrete being used. There is no doubt that because the state has left the maintenance of existing roads and the building of new ones floundering at the board room, we are reaping what they have sown. The cost of transporting goods will always transferred to the customer and the quality of our roads plays a big part in the final price.
With a good network of roads the country could see a reduction in costs associated transport including lower airline prices, easier access to job opportunities, new businesses can be developed such as the accommodation, vehicle hire and maintenance, agriculture can be expanded with better access, people would have cheaper access to medical, educational and governmental services and most importantly no district would be isolated and forgotten if everyone was connected to major townships by road.