SUVA, July 24 (Xinhua) -- Fiji will upgrade its roads, bridges and jetties around the island nation in the next 10 years to meet international standards, a Fijian minister said on Wednesday.
Speaking at a special meeting with Fiji Roads Authority (FRA) and the Land Transport Authority (LTA), Minister for Infrastructure and Transport Jone Usamate said the Fijian government is playing a catch-up game to ensure that the standards of roads, bridges and jetties are internationally recognized.
The Fijian government will need to invest 5 to 8 percent of the total GDP on infrastructure alone to meet these standards and this will take FRA a maximum of 10 years to achieve an internationally recognised infrastructure, said the minister.
Sealed roads that have been decimated by decades of uncontrolled overloading and negligible maintenance will require an investment of over 2 billion Fijian dollars (about 931 million U.S. dollars) over many years, to bring them back to an acceptable standard, according to Usamate.
The minister said that Fiji's biggest challenge in its transport infrastructure development is the legacy around, under-funding, ineffective forward planning, an out-dated transport network accommodating increasing road users, ineffective data collection on the network and maintenance and zero network resilience.
These issues have resulted in severely deteriorated conditions of roads, bridges and jetties, making it an urgency to bring the infrastructure to international standards.
And with potholes becoming a growing concern, contractors carrying out these repairs are now being strictly monitored.
FRA Chief Executive Jonathan Moore said earlier that repairing potholes during rainy periods has been a trend in the past in Fiji which will not be happening any more.
Fiji has been spending 20 million Fijian dollars (about 9.3 million U.S. dollars) on repairing potholes alone annually.
It is reported that Fiji's bridges are over 40 years old on average and a lot of them should be replaced by new ones in the years to come.
