Page 23 - IB APR 2017

FisheriesDevelopment
Chaotic Melanesia

Morning traffic into Suva at Four Miles.
Photo: Samisoni Pareti

Aerial view ... afternoon traffic crawls along the Kinoya back road from Suva to Nausori. Photo: GuruMedia

by Samisoni Pareti

AS an office worker in Suva, Fiji’s capital,
Andy is used to spending a good part of her
morning and afternoon stuck in bumper-
to-bumper traffic.
“That’s my life story,” she commented
on social media. Crowded city ... Gordon’s bus stop in Port Moresby Peak hour ... traffic jam in Honiara
Another working mum, Violet, joins her Photo: Sam Vulum Photo: Priestly Habru
soldier husband and three children as early traffic flow reducing to a crawl every day from the country’s Bureau of Statistics
as six o’clock for school drop-off before of the week. Some areas of the city have showed a 60 per cent jump in the number
heading to work to beat the morning traf- become terribly congested that a trip that of registered motor vehicles in Fiji for the
fic. She is not due to start work until 8am. normally would have taken 10 minutes is 13 years from 2001. Phenomenal growth
The story is no different to that of other taking half an hour. Others that would nor- was recorded during that period for vehicles
working mothers and fathers and school mally take 20 minutes are taking one and a classified as ‘carriers,’ which according
children living in Melanesian cities of Port half to two hours at the wrong time of the to our calculations registered a 2,783 per
Vila, Honiara and Port Moresby. day,” writes Sam Vulum, editor of the The cent increase. From a recorded 12 carriers
“Honiara is one of the worst unplanned Sunday Chronicle newspaper in Moresby. in 2003, total number of carriers in 2014
cities in the Pacific,” reports Island Sun Including the capital of Vanuatu, Port rose to 346.
newspaper publisher, Priestly Habru. “One Vila, the problem of Melanesia’s traffic ills The number of Government vehicles
does not need to look far from the traffic is blamed on poor planning. Vulum adds rose by 782 per cent, and other vehicles
congestion in peak hours to see the poor unprecedented growth and population ex- including those registered for diplomatic
planning of the Solomon Islands capital plosion as additional factors in PNG. Habru missions jumped by 264 per cent during
city.” on the other hand believes unrestraint the same period. Vehicles registered under
The same is true for Port Moresby, capital imports of used vehicles is a big cause of private also increased by 73 per cent and
of Papua New Guinea. “In peak hours, at traffic mayhem in the capital of Solomon 63 per cent for taxis. Rental and hire cars
almost every intersection and roundabout, Islands. also recorded a 157 per cent rise.
vehicles queue up bumper-to-bumper with This is also true for Fiji. Figures obtained n Continued overleaf

Islands Business, April 2017 23