NCDC is Dysfunctional
The outlook of the City of Port Moresby leaves a lot to be
desired, with uncontrollable filth and waste, hazarded road systems, physical
planning failures, and the growing traffic congestion amongst other obvious
cases of the growing decay within the city. These are facts to which a fabled
City Authority (NCDC) can certainly attest. Yes, there is waste, in the form of
over 100,000 tons of trash produced annually by city residents and business
houses. There are the hazarded road systems which are responsible for an
estimated 200 -300 road accidents in the City in a year as a result of neglect
and lack of maintenance of traffic management systems. Proliferation of settlements and illegal
structures within the City is spiking at an alarming rate of 8% each year,
thanks to a very lax and ineffective regulatory enforcement function of NCDC.
Traffic congestion is a nightmare and has been unprecedented for the past 4
years as a result of poor road network planning.
But more troubling has been the millions of kina the
Commission mismanages each year, and the burden NCDC and its wasteful outmoded
practices, place on business houses and the rate payers in the City. These
practices include the environmentally devastating burning of trash on roads
sides and at dumps unleashing noxious chemicals such as mercury, cadmium,
arsenic and dioxins which are harmful to the health residents, as opposed to
building the infrastructure for an eco-park and pushing for ever high
benchmarks toward eventual goal of recycling and composting 85 percent of the
waste resource recovered by the Commission annually. Roads barely have proper
signage’s and the poor state of road markings, road dividers, roundabouts
decorated with flower gardens and structures which are traffic hazard by modern
road standards.
Effective monitoring of illegal structures remain a daunting
task which the Commission fails to get right year in and out, let alone an
expensive exercise, when modern GPS surveillance systems could otherwise prove
to be cost-effective in the long-term and far more effective in containing the spiralling
growth of illegal structures within the City. Practical and cost effective
approaches to contain traffic congestion remain at the nose tip of the
Commission’s engineers, yet the organization and its engineers continue to fail
in their approaches to contain traffic congestion. A classical case is the use
of roundabouts to control traffic flow. Just why the Commission continues to
maintain roundabouts in major road networks such as the Gordons Food World
intersection, the Erima Airport intersection and the Taurama Murray barracks
intersection.
Roundabouts are not the best traffic management mechanism for
major road networks in any modern cities today. If flyovers cannot be afforded
(not at least until prudent management of funds is instilled), more traffic
lights should be installed. Cities of the 21 Centuries have maintained traffic
lights for decades to ease traffic congestion at major road intersections; it
is only in PNG that we choose otherwise to main roundabouts which is ludicrous.
The tired old argument about traffic lights been expensive to maintain is a
lame excuse when considering the total value in the loss of business of City
residents and companies each day as a result of delays caused by long and hasty
traffic ques. Building additional lanes to these main roads will not help
either.
For ratepayers and the Business houses, the main issue here
is the fiscal impropriety propagated by the NCDC. NCDC is primarily funded by
the monthly GST (K16 million) it receives from IRC, and rates which it charges
to rate payers (K500, 000 per month). In addition to that revenue stream, NCDC
gets an average (K15 million annually) subsidy provided by the Government.
Despite of been flushed with this, the Commission just does not seem to get the
most mundane things right.
For some reason, the operational cost of the organization
seem to overrun the revenues taken in, and the poorly managed functions of NCDC
(responsible to correct a lot of wrong we see in the City today) are either
bleeding money, or thanks to the ratepayers, just breaking even. This is
serious stuff, we have a dysfunctional organization been let to continue to
squander public money at the expense of quality infrastructure, wellbeing of
residents, and programs to transform the outlook of the City as a modern one.
The NCDC according to an independent audit by the Auditor General’s office
shows the organization to be derelict in managing its funds. According to the
audit, a good chunk of the Commission’s operational budget is swallowed up by
Governor’s dream parks, and political fantasies and the list is long, capping
off with shocking privileges for senior officials and expatriate advisors.
Being fiscally responsible is not just a friendly
suggestion; it is a full blown requirement. The Government of O Neill/ Dion
could not have demanded this enough upon its inauguration, yet a City
Government could be let to fiddle around whilst the City decimated. NCDC has for far too long not been held to
account for mismanagement resulting in all the decay the City faces today. This
organization has been allowed to squander millions as it so wished. The
National Government must act now to bring the organization into perspective.
The City of Port Moresby deserves better.