FIJI has a government infrastructure maintenance problem, says Minister for Economy Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum.

While speaking to more than 50 Lautoka residents during the National Budget Consultation in Lautoka yesterday, he said this was one of the reasons Fiji’s roads faced a number of problems.

“The reason why we have this problem with the roads is when you go to every single overseas country that maintains their roads well, every one of them reseal it after every two or three years,” he said.

“The biggest enemy to any road is water.

“Even the tarseal is not strictly waterproof. So countries like Australia and New Zealand they maintain their roads.

“In Fiji, we build the road then we leave it until there’s a big pothole that appears and then they go and cover it.”

He said Government was hoping to address this issue by adding more money into the maintenance of government utilities like roads.

“These are the kind of things that we are looking at and some people are saying how come we are allocating so much money to roads is because we are playing a catch up game.

“One of the reasons why we have allocated such a large amount to the Fiji Roads Authority is because we want to be able to have the resources and capacity to build new highways, repair old damaged roads, bridges and jetties.”