Once, easy road access connecting communities from Afio to Olusuú in Small Malaita, the Afio- Olusuú road link for the past decade has not lived up to the expectation of the people with eight broken bridges preventing vehicles from using the full length of the road.
A recent visit by this paper to Small Malaita in late December 2020 has discovered eight bridges in total along the Afio-Olusuú road link were damaged and needed full repair to allow vehicles to use the full length of the road.
According to locals spoken to, the last time vehicles used the full length of the road was 10 years ago when bridges were still intact allowing vehicles to run from Afio to Olusuú.
However, due to the number of broken bridges along the road, vehicles from Afio can only travel as far as Parasi airport and return to Afio, while vehicles from Olusuú can only travel to Rota and return.
The area from Rota to Suúpaine is totally cut off which slowly turned the road into a bush track due to lack of vehicle usage over the past years.
The following bridges are no longer used; Rota, Palasuú, Olaha, Suúraha, Tawahaule, Sioru,Suúmaimai, and Suúpaine.
The damaged bridges mean children and mothers must swim across some of these damaged bridges to access school and health care.
People from the affected areas interviewed by this paper are calling on Small Malaita Constituency, Solomon Islands Government, or other genuine donors to come forward and fund the repair of the affected bridges to allow people to once again enjoy service provided by the road link.
According to locals, the road was funded by an overseas some years back and was not upgraded to this day.
By WILSON SAENI
Auki News Bureau
