Daang sarado

Road closed – that’s the bane of life this Christmas season in several areas in Metro Manila, where repairs of roads and a flyover are being undertaken right smack in the middle of the holiday rush.

The cynical speculation, inevitable even in the government of daang matuwid or straight path, is that some folks are rushing to make an extra buck in time for Christmas gift-giving, as usual at the expense of Juan and Juana de la Cruz.

Defenders of the repair program, on the other hand, say it’s a case of damned if you do, damned if you don’t. They point out that if the work was not undertaken even during the holiday rush, the government would be criticized for lousy road maintenance.

In the case of the Buendia or Osmeña flyover in Makati, the ugly speculation is that the extra buck must have been made many months ago. The southbound lane of the flyover is again closed to traffic for the second time this year, to repair the stretch that was repaired. Counterflow has been allowed on the northbound lane.

The closure of the busy flyover has made traffic around the area, bad enough during the Christmas season, even more horrid.

The first rehabilitation required the closure of the 35-year-old flyover for more than three months as contractor Tokwing Construction started the repair on May 6 and finished it on Aug. 28.

That was for a stretch of pavement on both northbound and southbound lanes totaling 525 meters. Why does it take over three months to rehabilitate half a kilometer of asphalt pavement? The work cost taxpayers P87 million.

Opened during the wet season, the pavement disintegrated after a few days of rain. The potholes were gaping and the flyover surface looked like a lunar landscape, so public works officials were compelled to order Tokwing to redo the repair, with the company shouldering the cost of the new asphalt overlay.

Because of the continuing rains and floods, the repair, originally scheduled on Oct. 14, had to wait until Nov. 26, when repaving of the damaged stretch finally started on the southbound lane. Under the best scenario, work on both lanes will be completed by Dec. 15.

If Tokwing could not deliver quality pavement in three months of work, how can it do better in two weeks? Maybe company executives are hoping there will be no rain for at least three months from Dec. 15.

Or it might help that as a result of the botched rehabilitation work, the Department of Public Works and Highways blacklisted asphalt suppliers Filipino Ready Mix Corp. and Pacific Concrete Products Inc. Both are DPWH-accredited. Let’s hope their owners don’t simply register the companies under new names and renew their friendly ties with the DPWH.

It might also help if the DPWH took its project engineer, who was in charge of the earlier rehabilitation, out of the new repair project. News reports identified the engineer as Joyce Bacual.

How accountable are these engineers in ensuring the quality of public works projects? How high up does responsibility go?

A World Bank study has noted that the quality of the road network is a good indicator of the level of development in a country. If the Buendia flyover would be a gauge, the Philippines is in a sorry state.

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Substandard road projects should have no place in the government of daang matuwid.

There was a time some years ago when Sucat Road in Parañaque was constantly being torn up and repaired. During summer when no rain could melt substandard pavement, perfectly fine asphalt was destroyed anyway and repaved. The road became a patchwork of uneven asphalt and concrete.

Each time the road was torn up and repaired, there would be a billboard with the face and picture of some politician claiming credit for the project. In a way this shameless credit-grabbing was good; it gave the public an idea of who might be sending their children to exclusive schools on the backs of fat commissions.

This egregious waste of public funds, plus the scramble to grab credit for swindling taxpayers, was by no means unique to Parañaque.

It should have no place in an administration that has promised good governance, and yet we still see it everywhere.

It doesn’t have to be so. In every public works project, the contractor and any subcontractor must be properly identified and duly accredited. They must submit a list of their suppliers to the DPWH.

Some DPWH officials have complained that lawmakers are among the biggest culprits in the construction or repair of substandard roads and other public works projects. The lawmakers impose contractors that do not meet DPWH requirements to undertake projects earmarked under the congressional pork barrel system.

Nothing can part lawmakers from their pork. But they can be made to pick contractors only from the list of DPWH-accredited contractors to undertake their pet projects. They should also lead by example and stop putting their names and faces on billboards, claiming credit for projects they have earmarked.

The DPWH official directly in charge of supervising a public works project must also be clearly identified, so that accountability is easier if anything goes wrong.

Private contractors themselves should band together to purge their ranks and promote transparency and best practices in dealing with government. They will benefit when there is a level playing field and their dealings with their biggest client are aboveboard.

A freshly paved road that disintegrates after a few days of rain is not just a manifestation of negligence or incompetence in road maintenance; it is downright criminal.

President Aquino cannot have the country littered with roads closed for repairs under his watch. A country cannot announce to the world that it is open for business when its roads are closed.