West New Britain, New Ireland, Autonomous Region of Bougainville and Manus Provinces have signed individual Memorandum of Agreements with the Works & Highways Department for the Road Sector Reform Implementation program.
The signing was done at the Department Conference Room last Friday. There to witness and officiate was the Minister for Works Michael Nali, Secretary David Wereh, WNB Governor Sasindran Muthuvel, Manus Governor Charlie Benjamin, Manus MP and Speaker Job Pomat and provincial administration of each province.
Works and Highways Minister Michael Nali said the MoA is a way forward to work with the Provinces to ensure roads are funded, maintained and rehabilitated on time. He said the signed MoA will see the Department decentralize powers including management function to sub-national road authorities to manage their own road networks.
“This is a reform carried out by the Department through an Act of Parliament (Road Management Act 202) for Provincial Administrations to see a sealing of about K600million to assist Provinces ensure better roads are built and maintained,” said Minister Nali.
“It’s a long road but we have to start somewhere,” said Nali.
The signing will allow sub-national road authorities to effectively managed its agencies in the road sector to have clear defined roles and most importantly the legal authority to perform their legislative and policy functions.
The transfer of powers from DOW involves political decentralization, administrative, financial and procument decentralization to provinces.
The MOA signed is a Performance Agreement Pact that will push provinces to be responsible and implement the National Government’s medium term road sector targets in relation to their road network there by increasing productivity of investment in agriculture, manufacturing, tourism sectors of the local and national economy.
WNB Governor Sasindran Muthuvel said road is a key priority but work on most roads are delayed by systems of Government. He said the MoA will now give powers to Provincial authorities to ensure roads are fixed and done on time according to plan and budget.
East New Britain is now the only Province in the NGI Region yet to sign the agreement with Works. The Highlands, Momase and Southern Region will be scheduled to sign their respective MoA with Department of Works and Highways in the coming week.
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