THE Japanese International Corporation Agency (JICA) being the development partner of the Department of Works and Highways (DoWH) has commenced its pilot project in Kokopo, Bitapaka road upgrade in East New Britain province.
This is one of the pilot projects of JICA under its Capacity Development Road Maintenance (CDRM) Program Phase II.
Under the rollout of the CDRM Program Phase II, the province that will be participating is ENBP, Madang, Vanimo and Kiunga in Western Province.
According to a statement from the DoWH, “due to the Covid 19, we have been unable to conduct satisfactory activities and have had to be patient for almost two years so far.
However, a JICA expert team gathered civil staff, operators and mechanics in DoWH Kokopo office for a joint training regarding preparatory investigations for road maintenance projects. The training held in Kokopo was a forum for technical exchange and aimed to raise institutional capacity through knowledge dissemination,” the statement reads.
The two-week long training from February 14 to March 3 2023 covered necessary practical skills such as surveying to guide construction manner based on preliminary road design and quantity estimation. And preparation of daily working procedures, security caution, and quality control aspect with the deployment officer of the Plant & Transport Services Division in department of works & highways.
The training comes as part of the partnership between the PNG Government and JICA under the CDRM Phase II program rollout.
Provincial Works Manager for ENBP Amos Fimimba said, “it was a great opportunity to work collaboratively with other officers and learn about the challenges being faced in the province”.
“The most important thing is getting the basic right, from the utilization of construction machine and survey to construction. This training will help us to fully utilize our equipment to construct better quality roads.”
The pilot project (PP) site is going for test construction, but due to the delay in budget allocation, ongoing maintenance work has not been completed.
The 200-meter test section of the pilot site in ENBP is one of the results of the equipment provided by Japan (Economic and Social Development Program Grant) and the CDRM Phase II program rollout in the four provinces.
Therefore, the CDRM II expert team strongly believe that the counterpart funding from GoPNG when released will greatly help to utilizing the donated construction equipment as well as continuous staffing as agreed in the joint coordination committee meeting of CDRM II last September in 2022.
Despite constraints and challenges the training was conducted as a collaboration between DoWH PTS Division in HQ and the JICA expert Team with staff like operators, mechanics, and civil engineers. The next province the CDRM program will rollout is Madang Province, then Western in Kiunga and last will be Vanimo in Sandaun Province.
