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.

By FAI YAKAN