The road to Maramuni, an election promise fulfilled on Independence Day

On the morning of September 16^th,  as we approached the last hill before  Pasalagus station, Wabag MP, Dr. Lino Tom, was recounting the challenges faced by the district’s road building crew.

The first time I went there was in April. 

We couldn’t go all the way because the road was still incomplete.  I said in a short blog post that the track would reach the station within six months… and it did.  In a country like ours burdened with a lot of service delivery hurdles, It was  an exhilarating feeling seeing this project unfold in its final phases.

You can’t really appreciate the feat of engineering  unless you go there yourself. 

Difficult terrain

The road cuts through some of the most difficult terrain in Papua New Guinea.  From the air, the land is an expanse of thick, mountainous  jungle as far as the eye can see.  The blanket of green extends to the Sepik and gradually blends into the grassland marshes of the Karawari.

“This is where the Maramuni people live,”  Dr. Lino Tom said when we flew over in April. “They don’t live in one village. They’re scattered in tiny hamlets on the ridges.”

Along the road, I saw massive trees that were dug up by the bulldozers. The roots exposed and the moss hanging off the broken branches.   The boulders on the roadsides are the biggest I have ever seen. Some stand more than two meters high. They’re wide and impossible to move. In some places, the bulldozer has had to go around them.

In the most difficult sections,  bulldozers cut into the cliff faces to create the road. It was the best  route they could take with the limited equipment they had.  Drivers have to hug the cliff sides as they weave around the sharp bends and down the steep inclines.

At one stage, the small  bulldozer helped  guide the cruisers down a steep road section. I got off and walked down the mountain further stressing  my painful right knee busted in a previous adventure in Telefomin years ago.  I was desperately hoping it wouldn’t pop as it usually does under stress.  It didn’t.

A hard political promise to deliver

Four  years ago, Dr. Lino Tom took a huge political risk.  He promised the people of Maramuni a road linking Wabag to Pasalagus – the administrative center of the Maramuni local level government area.

One year, after getting elected, he sought donor funding for a new health center at Pasalagus. One of the conditions of the funding was road access which didn’t exist at the time.

“Our funding is tied to a strict timeline, if we run behind schedule, we won’t be able to draw down the money,” he said in April.

In  2018, the district brought  in the best people who were willing to work for a fraction of the cost.  The administration bought its own machines and work began on the road. 

“We spent all the money on equipment, fuel and wages.  If we had brought in external contractors, the work would not have been done.  There were a lot of unhappy people. But I said we cannot profit from the misery of our own people.

“There is no profit to be made from pilot tracks.  Government agencies like the District Development Authorities should be allowed to build the roads. It’s quite difficult and expensive.” Dr. Lino said.

Joy and tears

On the Last hill before Pasalagus, a young man brought a handmade chair for  him to sit on. He turned down the offer. An elderly man came over to hug and thank him for the road.  Another young man spoke with tears in his eyes. Men, women and children linked their arms together and danced in a half circle until they were out of breath.

Then, for a kilometer and a half, children ran beside the convoy of vehicles chanting “O ipi, O ipi, O ipi.”

On the field, a group of elderly men and women gathered around Dr. Lino. They were all weeping.  The road is the single biggest infrastructure development since the airstrip was built 70 years ago.

For decades, many hoped that this day would come. But It was an impossible dream. How could anyone build a road through the cliffs and over the deep ravines?

Politicians had come and gone with promises.  Experts placed the estimated figure for the road construction at K500 million. What government would invest that kind of money in a single district for a 60 kilometer road in an area that showed little economic promise?

For project manager, Stanley Lakao, reaching Maramuni after four years has been very satisfying.  Lakao left his mining job at Pogera and moved with his family to Wabag to work on road projects.

“When we built the road, I met a woman in the middle of the jungle. She was carrying 20 kilograms of rice, three cartons of noodles, three liters of oil and a child. She had come from Wabag and was heading to Maramuni.

“I asked if we could take her part of the way. But she said, don’t worry, I’m already there. The road you built has made it much easier. I’m already home. I had tears in my eyes.”