Issues of governance in Papua New Guinea: building roads and bridges

Abstract

This paper draws on the author’s recent experiences as Environmental and Social Specialist on an ADB road upgrading and maintenance project in four provinces along the Highlands Highway, as well as reports on numerous recent and ongoing road projects in several parts of the country. The emphasis is on the Highlands region, but all the evidence indicates that the issues canvassed here apply throughout Papua New Guinea. By and large villagers, townspeople, businessmen, bureaucrats and politicians throughout Papua New Guinea are keen to see new roads built and existing roads improved, or at least maintained properly. Despite this enthusiasm for roads, for a host of reasons broached in this paper it is becoming increasingly difficult to implement road and bridge construction and improvement works throughout the country. The issues are broadly those of governance, which, following UNDP (1997) I take to mean: ‘the exercise of political, economic and administrative authority to manage a nation’s affairs. It is the complex mechanisms, processes and institutions through which citizens and groups articulate their interests, exercise their legal rights and obligations and mediate their differences’. In the case of roads, the current situation is far from one of ‘good governance’, as the ability of the state to exercise its functions of facilitating road development fairly and effectively has been severely compromised in recent years. At the same time, and partly as a response to the ‘power vacuum’ left by the state, the citizens (in this case the traditional owners of the lands on which the roads and bridges are built) are becoming evermore forceful in asserting their rights with respect to land acquisition and compensation. The result of the burgeoning problems associated with these land acquisition and compensation issues is that road and bridge projects are suffering longer delays and increased costs.