Transport strategy to be launched

 FORMER Transport secretary Henry Parakei says the national government will be launching a national transport strategy this year.

He was speaking in support of new Transport secretary John Kaio in a brief paper presented at the PNG-Australia business council meeting in Port Moresby on Monday.

The paper was on lessons learnt from previous plans and problems that the transport sector had to be contended with during the implementation stages.

Parakei said the government would be launching a national transport strategy and medium term transport plan in June.

The strategy mentioned three volumes of specification of the project. Volume one covers transport sector policies, institutional development, legislative reforms, human resources development training and investment programme.

Volume two covers investment programmes ranked in order of priority for the three modes of transports.

Volume three provides analysis of projects, programmes, institutional and legislative development and reforms.

The Department of Transport has established a mechanism through the transport sector coordination and monitoring and the subcommittee to the ministerial committee on infrastructure for which the secretary of transport is the chairperson.

He said all policy and NEC submission had to go through that process for all administrative technical, legal, financial and managerial issues were dealt with before it went to the ministerial committee on infrastructure.

If endorsed, then the submission proceeds to the national planning committee headed by the Deputy Prime Minister before it goes to NEC.

Parakei said to add credibility and integrity to the submission particularly on investment, the department on behalf of the sector has develop a unit assessment and prioritisation model for any type of transport projects – big or small – for all three modes of transport.