Japanese firm to undertake MRT repair

The P30 million-a-month Japanese technical maintenance contractor of the Metro Rail Transit (MRT) will undertake needed repairs on the trains of the EDSA rail line to put an end to the recurring breakdowns that hit it in the past weeks, MRT general manager Robert Lastimoso said.

Lastimoso told The Star that the needed repairs involve the installation by their technical maintenance contractor TES Philippines, of certain gadgets to back up the faulty "contactor system" of most of the trains of the railway that were made in Czechoslovakia.

TES Philippines is a subsidiary of Japanese construction giant Sumitomo Corporation.

Lastimoso said that an investigation they had made on the string of train breakdowns at the MRT in the past months since June found out that the trains tehmselves were to blame since they were built for a cold climate and not a tropical climate like the Philippines.

"They have already been making the repairs for some time now," Lastimoso said.

It will be recalled that MRT train breakdowns in the past months had caused great inconvenience to the thousands of the rail line’s passengers, with much of the incidents occurring during rush hour.

The worst of the breakdowns were two incidents last June 28 and one last Aug. 12 wherein trouble hitting the trains of the rail line caused an explosion and subsequent panic and chaos among passengers at the railway. — Rainier Allan Ronda