How A World Bank Funding Condition In 1995 Helped Break Papua New Guinea’s Roads System

Scott
Waide, RNZ Pacific PNG
correspondent

Analysis – When Papua New
Guinea’s National Executive Council (NEC) handed down
Decision 41/95 in the mid-1990s, it was pitched as
modernisation – a shift from government-led construction to
a private sector-driven model.

But three decades
later, many inside the Department of Works and Highways
(DOWH) say the decision helped accelerate the deterioration
of the country’s roads, hollowing out an institution that
once kept the nation connected.

Before Decision
41/95, DOWH was not just a regulator – it was a
builder.

For decades, the department operated base
camps spaced every 50 kilometres along major highways. It
was a model that worked. These depots had graders, rollers,
dump trucks, bridge crews and mechanics ready to respond to
emergencies within hours.

When DOWH deputy secretary
Brian Alois, graduated from the PNG University of Technology
with a civil engineering degree, he was sent to a rural
district in Morobe Province as a DOWH trainee. They built
bridges, roads and other government infrastructure when the
department had an active training program.

He says the
system once kept the country’s main arteries in far better
condition than they are today.

“In those days, you
could drive from Lae to Madang in under four hours. That was
the strength of Works in its prime,” he said.

The
reforms that reshaped the department were heavily influenced
by World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF)
thinking. As the country grappled with the economic fallout
of the Bougainville conflict and wider fiscal pressures, the
government adopted structural adjustment programs demanded
by the World Bank and IMF that called for a smaller public
sector, more outsourcing and the commercialisation of state
services.

The impact, according to senior officers,
was profound.

The country’s construction industry was
not yet mature, and many contractors lacked the machinery,
skilled workers, and experience to maintain the network at
the level Works once did. Procurement delays and irregular
funding cycles widened the gap.

Former secretary Joel
Luma said the department’s earlier role as a nation-builder
was never adequately replaced by the new model.

“DOWH
has always been the backbone of the country – setting the
standards, building the roads and bridges, leading the way
for all other services. Without roads, there can be no
health posts, no schools, no electricity. Every connection
starts with us,” he said.

As the system faltered, the
country’s roads steadily deteriorated. Freight slowed,
travel times ballooned, and remote communities suffered the
most – waiting weeks or months for access to resume when key
links failed.

Department secretary Gibson Holemba has
frequently reminded policymakers of the financial and social
cost of letting the network decline. He has warned that the
country has already lost extraordinary value because of
years of underinvestment and the collapse of public
maintenance.

“We have lost so many roads – and all the
money put into building them – simply because there was no
maintenance,” he said.

“Every road lost is not just
kina lost. It is people cut off from services, children
walking for days, and markets that never reach the towns.
Our network is our nation’s lifeline, and once it
disappears, we all pay for it.”

Without its own
maintenance crews, DOWH could no longer respond immediately
to emergencies. The effects rippled across the country –
from delayed freight and stalled economic activity to
families losing access to health services and school
children walking long distances.

Holemba estimates
that Papua New Guinea lost over a billion kina worth of
roads and infrastructure over a period of 30 years through
inconsistent maintenance.

Long-serving officers say
the consequences were not just economic but human. They
recall a time when DOWH presence in the provinces defined
the country’s development.

As Papua New Guinea’s
population has grown and climate pressures intensified, the
nation’s infrastructure has struggled to keep pace. For many
inside the department, the lesson of Decision 41/95
remains stark.

The decision was rescinded about 20
years later. But the damage had already been done.

The
impact was seen in poor health and education statistics.
Teachers unable to reach previously connected rural schools,
left and maternal and child mortality rates
increased.

In the last 10 years, the DOWH has tried to
find its place again.

Construction of new roads led by
the DOWH connecting PNG’s capital to the highlands and
Momase region to the north has been well received by some of
the most rural communities.

But returning to the old
days when the maintenance systems worked will take some time
to
achieve.

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