Sixty-eight unsealed tertiary roads with a total length of 28 km in Honiara and outside the town boundary will be restored and routinely maintained for 12 months in the coming weeks. Three steep sections of unsealed roads in Tanuli, Kukum, Mt Austine, GP, and April Ridge, Panatina will be sealed with structural concrete or cement with a combined length of 690 meters will ease bottlenecks servicing 5.20 km of roads. This is possible through the partnership of the Solomon Islands Government and the Australian Government through the CAUSE Project.
To mark the beginning of the new development, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Infrastructure Development Mr. Stephen Maesiola signed ten contracts on 7 March 2022 with the contractors.
The four contractors are AP and S Plant Hire and Construction, Capitol Construction PTY Ltd, Hi-Tech Engineering, and Jed Enterprise Ltd.
Fifteen private contractors signified their interest for the ten contracts; ten dropped their proposals on 23 February 2022, with one bidder coming late and was not included in the final evaluation.
The ten tendered contracts received fifty-eight bids from the ten contractors buying different contract packages. After reading the proposals with the representative present, CAUSE BEC started the tedious individual bids review and evaluation to arrive at the lowest calculated, responsive, and complying bidder per contract.
The resulting evaluation team trims down the ten contractors to four. The four companies will begin road rehabilitation in various tertiary roads of Honiara as of next week.
Meanwhile, Permanent Secretary Maesiola warned the contractors to perform their job diligently with standard as he won’t tolerate terminating their contracts should they fail. The signing of the contract’s ceremony took place this afternoon at the CAUSE Project office and was witnessed by the Director of MID Mike Qaqara and the CAUSE project team.
Funding for road rehabilitation works comes under Australia’s contribution to the CAUSE project which is financed by an IDA Grant and PNG and Pacific Islands Umbrella Facility Grant, administered by the World Bank.