IF the present administration is to be remembered at all in our history, it will be for presiding over the unspeakable deterioration of our country’s transportation facilities and services.
Under its watch, city streets and provincial highways degenerated; motorized urban transport units crashed and malfunctioned; railway lines broke; sea ports congested; and airports were declared by international aviation authorities as some of the worst in the world.
Now, the same administration is telling us it has bid out or is in the process of bidding out various infrastructure projects worth P6.58 trillion in the transportation, social, water, energy and communications sectors, the bidding to be completed by mid-2016, the end of its term.
What is the administration trying to do? Convince us that it is busy? Or impress us with what it thinks is a monumental achievement? Whatever it is trying to do, it is merely raising in the public mind a question: What has it been doing in the last five years?
Obviously, it has been doing close to nothing, perhaps it was “noynoying,” as the young people would say.
Infrastructure projects certainly need to be planned, and planning requires time. But this planning will only be for describing the general contours of the projects and estimating the financial costs for the guidance of the private bidders. It is the successful bidder that will lay out the details of the technical plans and the specifics of the financial scheme. For any given project, any moderately competent engineer and financial adviser can complete the job in at most two years.
This means that we should have been enjoying the benefits of some completed projects since 2013. Instead, we are made to wait for pies in the sky.
The Department of Transportation and Communications is well-known for its possession of highly qualified engineers and financial analysts who knew their jobs and carried them out well. Are they still there? Or have they become victims of political vindictiveness and pettiness? Transportation Secretary Emilio A. Abaya, whom many consider as the most incompetent transportation and communication secretary the country has ever had, would know.
Unlike the present administration, the next one can be expected to regard signed contracts with respect and proceed to implement them as soon as it can. This should prevent us from losing some more precious time. The private sector will be something else, however. It might decide to go to court and question elements of past biddings, in which case not just the six years under the present administration will have been lost but additional years, as well.
We cannot afford to throw away many more years through sheer incompetence. We must work double time if we are to catch up with our neighbors, who are marching speedily forward. The economy is in serious need of infrastructure to underpin growth and development. If this infrastructure is not forthcoming or is forthcoming only in spurts, it will consign the economy to stagnation and decay.
We cannot wait for July 1, 2016.
Image credits: Jimbo Albano
3 comments
Is this a veiled threat to kick PNoy out before 2016??!
Sure enough, the PPP Center just announced that the Aquino administration has bid out nine PPP contracts in May alone. We should have a pool to see how many of these get bogged down in three months over bureaucratic interference. As for adherence to PPP contracts, we’ve seen how the government blithely reneged on the water concessionaires and when it lost to one in arbitration, refuses to comply with a final and executory order. We’ve seen how the NLEX-SLEX connector was not only subjected to a Swiss Challenge, but the approval for said challenged languished on NEDA Chair Aquino’s desk for years until Drilon’s traffic mess got PNoy’s leaden derriere moving again. Matuwid na Daan is quite simply Noynoying.
Well said. A lot of impressive numbers multiplied by zero is still zero. 5 Years in office and still no completed major PPP infra projects,