Road opens economic opportunities for farmers

MORE than 13,000 people from the six council wards of Jiwaka have a road network to transport their produce to markets.
The 4.5km road upgrading, from Avi market to Kamdika in the Anglimp local level government, was funded by the World Bank under its Productive Partnership in Agriculture Programme (PPAP) and supported by the Government and International Fund for Agriculture Development.
Peter Pia, a civil engineer and project consultant, who supervised the construction of the road said economic activities during and after the road work was picking up.
He said this at Kamdika village on Monday during an inspection of the completed road project.
He said the main beneficiaries of the road were the six council wards Dopdop 1, Dopdop 2, Dopdop 3, Dopdop 4, Kuput 1 and Ketipen 1.
Pia said when their feeder road was impassable, they neglected their coffee gardens, vegetable gardens and trade stores closed because of the difficulty of getting to the main road to take buses to Mt Hagen or Minj and Banz.
He said the three coffee plantations Mukupi, Meka, and Raun Raun were run down and other potential agricultural opportunities had not been developed.
He said with the road access restored, changes would come to the area.
Pia said since the road was upgraded, villagers had also started to re-establish their coffee and crop gardens.
He said main parts of the region had experienced similar issues with road links to markets and urged the provincial and national governments to make road building a priority to kick start economic growth in the agricultural sector at the district and ward levels.