The International Labour Organization (ILO) under EU Funded UN Joint STREIT PNG Programme, recently engaged three local contractors to commence rehabilitation and specific maintenance of four farm-to-market access roads.
The total of which is 52.1 km. It is to create an enabling environment to support cocoa, vanilla and fisheries farmers in the Greater Sepik Region.
ILO signed the contracts with:
- Hiawani Limited for the rehabilitation of 7.8 km Banak-Wautogik road in Wewak District,
- Midway Pacific Ltd for the Specific Maintenance of 12.8 km Balif-Araseli road in Maprik District, and
- Kaystar Construction Ltd for two (2) roads;
- Rehabilitation of a 6.5 km Munji-Haripmo road in Yangoru-Saussia District, and
- Maintenance of 25 km Pasi-Krisa road in Vanimo-Green District, Sandaun Province.
The Programme stated that these roads were selected based on high production of vanilla, cocoa and fisheries in the areas that are supported under the EU-STREIT PNG Programme.
The contract duration of these specific lots and packages are 12 months and the contractors have been given two weeks to mobilise resources including machineries to commence road works by 15 July 2022.
The ILO Engineer will conduct regular supervision, monitoring and monthly meetings to discuss work progress, challenges and way forward.
“We will not only monitor, we will be satisfied to support you by providing technical training to the key personnel of the contractors for continuous capacity development and quality assurance of sub projects,” explained Shailendra Kumar Jha, ILO’s Infrastructure Specialist/Chief Technical Advisor under the EU-STREIT PNG.
“Given the delay caused by the COVID-19 pandemic which has put a strain on the progress, I’m pleased to announce that this is a milestone achievement for the road transport infrastructure component to ensure we assist the government in its efforts to bring markets closer to the unreached in our focus areas,” said Dr Xuebing Sun, EU-STREIT PNG Programme Coordinator.
The contractors were selected through the competitive bidding process using e-portal of United Nation Global Market Place (UNGM) to ensure principle of sustainable procurement of ILO. This is a totally new practice in the case of PNG where local contractors were trained on e-bidding and successfully submitted their bids using UNGM and ILO electronic Tendering System (eTS).
As part of EU-STREIT PNG’s mandate to support capacity development, all contractors including their personnel will undergo training in technical areas. This is to ensure delivery of quality road transport works for EU-STREIT Programme in the Sepik Region while also fulfil PNG government’s requirement to develop professional contractors in the country.
Under road transport infrastructure component led by ILO, 15 rural roads in the Sepik totaling 264kms in length will be rehabilitated to support the market access initiative implemented by the EU-STREIT PNG for rural farming communities.
This is to boost agriculture production and agribusiness activities pertaining to the three targeted value chains for an improved income and cash flow for the rural sector.