The streets of Lae flood during heavy rainfall because they are clogged up with rubbish discarded by city residents.
Lae MP John Rosso raised this issue after seeing numerous comments regarding the flooding in the Top town area last week.
“If you are in Lae, we have experienced heavy rainfall day and night for the last few days and its excessive and above average,” he stated.
“The drainage is clogged up by people who have no regard and just throw rubbish on the streets.
“Road and drainage reserves have been occupied by unscrupulous people who have obtained land titles over these reserves, resulting in the Lae City Authority being unable to access them to work.
“Clogged and blocked pipes are the result of poor structural design and small sizes of pipes that are blocked and hard to access.”
The LCA also pointed out that the roads get flooded due to the lack of specific maintenance by the past council management, “which did zero work in ensuring routine maintenance was done”.
“However, LCA has been exploring options to rectify these issues,” said the Lae MP.
“Lae builders are providing specialised plumbing equipment and expertise to clear the clogged culverts in the town and market areas. Manual cleaning can not penetrate lengthy pipework.
“Engineers are looking at redesigning the drainage systems and ways of preventing trash blockage and clogging.
“The public should use common sense in disposing garbage as rubbish ends up in drains and causes clogging.
“I am working on recouping drainage reserves that have ended up in the wrong hands without consideration.”