infrastructure

Government can’t find the word “maintenance”

The Ministerio de Obras Públicas says it has invested billions in road improvement projects.

Some experts contend that the State has not properly accounted for the cost of maintenance.

Iván Uribe/LA PRENSA

Road Work: Unless the government has a plan for maintaining the more than 3,000 kilometers of roads it's working on, they´ll deteriorate quickly, and public and private investment in them will lose value over time.1056399

The Ministerio de Obras Públicas (Mop) has invested $237 billion in 479 road building and improvement projects throughout the country, but that's not enough to cover maintenance, says Ulises Lay, one of the country's leading engineers.

Lay says the State needs to invest at least another $3 billion to protect its investment in improving transportation infrastructure. Moreover, he stressed, the process of granting maintenance contracts must be transparent, and contractors and inspectors must be held to all the proper standards and codes.

Lay isn't the only expert concerned about the lack of attention to infrastructure maintenance, not to mention all the laypeople who daily have to deal with the country's deteriorating roads and bridges, inadequate water and power supply, and insufficient sewage and wastewater systems.

Rogelio Alemán, the president of CUSA (Constructora Urbana S.A.), a company that has worked on multiple Panama Canal projects, recently remarked that “the government believes in the yellow pages, but it doesn't find the word 'maintenance' there.” Panamanians deserve better, he said.

Public Works minister Benjamin Colamarco, who has been accused of hiding the government's plans for the Cinta Costera from the public, included the Corredor Norte and the highway to Colón on his list of projects that the Ministerio has invested in. That came as a surprise to the institution's former minister minister, Eduardo Quiróz, who noted that those projects and others were awarded as concessions to private companies.