Lae needs better road infrastructure

Written by Writer on Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008

Lae needs better road infrastructure

Post-Courier Online
Thursday 23rd October, 2008

LAE needs better infrastructure for products made in the city to be moved to destinations by road efficiently, the Morobe Agricultural Show Society said.

President Mike Quinn said Lae was a fast developing manufacturing city with unique opportunities to distribute imported and locally made products.

Mr Quinn said it was also the largest port in PNG for the export of commodity produce.

“Import and distribution of produce and manufactured products from Lae by ship is not a problem but the delivery of produce to Lae by road and the handling of all this through the port of Lae is stretching current facilities to the maximum,” Mr Quinn said.

In his welcome message to the showgoers, Mr Quinn said Lae needed better infrastructure in order to handle this.

He said the port of Lae needed major expansion and it was very pleasing to see that measures were already well advanced towards a major expansion of the port facilities.

“The Okuk Highway is currently stressed and is being maintained to a basic level, but needs significant investment injected into it to prevent it falling into serious disrepair.

“But more importantly what most people do not see is the deterioration and almost total collapse of the small feeder roads that lead off the major highways into villages, valleys and rural areas where the bulk of the agricultural produce comes from and where the bulk of the imports and manufactured products ultimately end up,” he said.

Mr Quinn said a serious effort must be made to improve the rural roads and other essential infrastructure in the rural areas to underpin the current growth in PNG and help ensure that PNG remain cushioned from current global economic crisis.

“We need the government to push this agenda otherwise it will not occur,” he added.