We should worry about urban drift

WE are starting to see the effects of overpopulation and overcrowding in major urban centres in the country.
In the nation’s capital alone, the unregulated growth of squatter settlements and other unplanned residential areas is, as we all know, exerting pressure on the city’s municipal authority and businesses to provide services – health, education, employment and housing – that make living in an urbanised environment possible.
The trend can also be observed in the other two major centres of Lae and Mt Hagen.
What many Papua New Guineans are ignorant or unaware of is that if people continue to flood into the three urban settings and city planners, provincial and national governments do little in the way of planning to change the trend, then those places will reach saturation point where anarchy, mayhem and chaos will reign.
Urbanisation in PNG has become a major issue of concern, given the symptoms of social and economic disorder such as crime, unemployment, ethnic conflicts, squatters and unplanned settlements and a general breakdown of law and order.
The influx of settlers from Momase, New Guinea Islands and Highlands regions has seen Lae’s settlement population make up more than half of the city’s populace.
Port Moresby, Lae and Mt Hagen have all borne the brunt of them.
Since the country’s main legislative, manufacturing and business hubs are located in those cities, it is not an inconceivable notion that one day in the near future, the nation could be brought to its knees if they are left to develop and expand without a clear strategy and policy to control and direct that growth.
Urbanisation means turning a place or places into urban centres complete with the prerequisite services and amenities.
We obviously need more cities and towns to provide what the top three urban centres are currently being required to do.
This is a way to develop the country and keep the population evenly distributed, so that every citizen can have access to goods and services that are now not easily within reach.
The National Urbanisation Policy (NUP) adopted in 2010 is a framework and plan designed to strengthen the economic, social, and environmental fabric of PNG’s towns and cities by
better managing the urbanisation process and urban growth challenge.
The precursor to the NUP can be traced back to 1973 when the country’s first policy dealing with urban issues was developed in a paper on ‘Self-help housing and settlement for urban areas’.
In 1977, the National Planning Office facilitated a paper on Managing urbanisation in PNG, which was a significant contribution to the process of gaining and consolidating political independence.
Unfortunately, little in the way of implementation occurred due to a lack of political will and institutional leadership in the 1980s and 1990s.
Consequently, it took a decade for the Government to finally endorse the NUP.
We are hopeful that it will equip and fund the Office of Urbanisation to begin directing the overall strategy outlined in the policy.
The management of urbanisation in PNG remains problematic.
There is much talk about the wider urbanisation process, with the impacts and consequences of such change increasingly visible for all to see.
The problem must be viewed in its entirety and not just from a region to region or province to province basis.