PNGCars

The island province of Manus presents many unique challenges for the Provincial Works and Transport Division there, as it maintains, repairs and builds roads and sea transport infrastructure for the local population on the island.

He said the roads would improve the economy, enabling people to reach the central port of Lorengau to sell their cocoa and other cash crops by road, as well as receive support from Lorengau especially for high schools and other educational institutions on the main island as well as many other islands.

To highlight how difficult life is for many of the islanders,he said currently with the price of zoom (fuel for outboard motors on boats) being so high, many isolated communities will spend about K300 – K400 just to come to a port nearest to a road which will lead to Lorengau. Unfortunately, this means traveling a fair distance to the nearest road link.

Thus the cost of living and cost of receiving basic services such as health and education is quite high on the island province by PNG standards.

So building and maintaining road infrastructure and establishing new or rehabilitating old jetties around the Islands is of significant importance to the improvement of the lives of the Manus people.

However, in order to construct new roads and maintain infrastructure, they must overcome some unique challenges.

These challenges include sourcing good rock in order to build the roads. In World War 2 and in the colonial period, many of the roads were built from source rocks quarried at Los Negros Island at a site near the Momote airport and transported inland. The Manus National Highway and Provincial gravel roads were made using this base rock. However this quarry has been depleted and is now gone below sea level so they must look elsewhere. Unfortunately there are not many sites to choose from in Manus.

Mr Ware said that they have identified potential source of rock and gravelfor road building purposes but they would need a rock crusher to be brought into Manus and kept there, to make it economical for their road building purposes. This quarry is about 60km east of the East Highway, an uneconomical distance for private road contractors. Previously there was a contractor based in Manus and was fixing the roads of the province under the World Banks Road Rehabilitation& Restoration Program however the problem of finding, crushing and transporting suitable road material to the roads proved uneconomical for the contractor.

Another unique challenge is the lack of experienced road contractors on the island. For PNG, road construction companies are important because they handle the full scope of work, whether it’s building or maintaining a road network. This means that they provide necessary plant equipment, they mobilize engineers and labor, and they source rock and other material for the roads and more. The Works Department awards contracts to these companies to build the roads. That’s how it normally should work.

But in Manus, there is a problem because there are no experience road contracting firms that can provide this expertise. “ In the case of Manus, we have difficulties in contractors, there are no contractors on site, when contractors mobilize on site its quite expensive for them to work and they consistently face setbacks like mobilization, weather, lack of suitable road base material within the vicinity of road project.

Another problem was due to the isolation of Manus, contractors routinely had to deal with delays in the procurement of construction materials, spare parts, periods without fuel (which also affected the power supply on the islands) and other project related items.

Previous contractors have found the going tough and this affected their bottom line, proving that operation in the island was sadly uneconomical.

In order to overcome this, the Works Department has taken a proactive role in road building in the province, doing much of the work that, ordinarily, road contractors would do in other provinces in PNG.

On the East West Highway, the Provincial Works Department has taken over the road restoration work which was not completed by the contractors.

This is not an ideal situation for both the Provincial Works Department and the World Bank, however, the circumstances on the island has left them with no choice. Either they take over the work, which means mobilizing labor and equipment and rock material or leave the rehabilitation work on roads incomplete, which means the Manus people suffer.

Mr Ware said the Provincial Works department is now completing the last 20km to Mundrau under the World Bank program. Work is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

One of the Manus Work Dozers on site

The Manus people and the Manus leaders have supported the work on the Manus roads which has helped overcome some of the difficulties.

The Manus Provincial Works Department has received tremendous support from the Manus elected leaders and the Manus Provincial Administration who have supplied the works plant with tipper trucks, an excavator and other machinery. This has helped the work of the department tremendously to complete the restoration work.

At the same time, the people of Manus have been very supportive of the World Bank funded Road Maintenance & Rehabilitation program on the Island.

For many years, the people suffered terribly when the roads of Manus fell in to disrepair. So when the opportunity came to have better roads, they supported it whole-heartedly.

“ In the last 10 – 20yrs, roads were not maintained, eventually the roads got worse, people would avoid the roads and travel down to the sea to come to Lorengau. So when the opportunity came to rehabilitate these roads, we carried out awareness, we told the communities that the World Bank would not fund compensation. This was an opportunity for better roads. So they gave up cash crops, they gave up land, their drinking water sources got spoilt, because they wanted the road, because it was more important and would improve their lives. Once the road was fixed, they didn’t need to carry heavy loads on their backs for kilometers anymore. Their support for the roads of Manus has been very good,” says Mr Ware.

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