MADANG DISTRICT CARRIES OUT COMPREHENSIVE ROAD WORKS SURVEY.
By Hon MP Bryan Kramer
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Yesterday I landed back in Madang at around 5pm only to walk straight into a training workshop at the Madang District Project Office.
The workshop is part of the District Works Program that will commence in 2020. It was facilitated by Joshua Tengdui a Civil Engineer with Kramer Ausenco and former Construction Engineer with Exxon Mobil.
Mr Tengdui traveled with me to Madang on an initial 8 day field trip that involves carrying out a comprehensive assessment of all the existing roads within Madang District over the next two months.
The program is being undertaken by my office in partnership with Kramer Auseno, the county’s leading civil and construction engineering company. Established in 1978 it has offices in Australia, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji, Samoa and Tonga.
Kramer Ausenco have agreed to provide professional and technical advice to the District free of charge. They are gladly offering these services pro-bono (free) as part of their social responsibility and contribution to Madang people.
The aim of the program is to carry out a comprehensive survey to establish the condition and baseline of the all existing roads within the District and then formulate a robust maintenance and roads improvement program based on best practices.
Madang District has a total of 480km of roads which are classified as follows:
1) National Roads 60km made up of 44km of north and south coast roads and Madang Town roads 14.3km;
2) Provincial Rural Roads within Madang District are 138.5km;
3) District Rural Roads, 282km.
Most if not all the roads are in bad condition from lack of maintenance since the National Government scrapped the Provincial Works Plant and Transport Division (PTB) back in 1994.
Phase one of the program involves carrying out baseline survey to establish the condition of the all the roads in the district. This also includes carrying out field training of members of local communities to be road inspectors. They will be trained on collection of data and assessment for development of a maintenance program.
It also includes knowledge sharing with the Madang Provincial Works Department.
Phase two will be to establish District Works Unit which the Madang District Development Authority is committed to provide K6 million funding to set up and procure equipment for four works teams that will operate throughout the district.
A further K2 million will be allocated annually to fund their operations, tasked with the implementation of maintenance program 6 days a week, 52 weeks in the year.
In addition the Marape Government has allocated K10 million in 2020 Budget for maintenance of Madang Urban Roads. The district works unit will bid for the contract in a joint venture with a local contractor to ensure the work is carried out to the highest standards and within cost.
Picture: Joshua Tengdui conducting training workshop at Madand District Project Office.
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