Maintaining infrastructure

Driving by that nice new building Henry Sy Sr. donated to the University of the Philippines at Bonifacio Global City, I wondered if the deed of donation said anything about the maintenance of the building. I am afraid that in no time at all, that building will look as decrepit as any government building for lack of adequate maintenance.

The State university, whose administration should know better, is no different from other government agencies when it comes to maintenance of its physical plants. In a recent visit to the Diliman campus, I noticed that buildings that were not even there when I graduated in the ’ 70s look pretty old and abused.

Check out the rest rooms and you can confirm the lack of attention to maintenance that has degraded the functionality of the building. Proof of inadequate maintenance at UP is the recent fire in the Faculty Center.

From what had been reported in media, it seems the fire was caused by improper maintenance of its electrical system. The Faculty Center was already there when I graduated in the early ’ 70s and it is almost a certainty that maintenance was the least of UP Admin’s concerns.

I am told they lack adequate budgets, but I don’t buy that excuse. There are things that must simply be done like fixing leaking roofs and yes, checking the adequacy of electrical wirings for safety’s sake.

It isn’t just UP. It seems we do not have a culture of maintenance. We allow infrastructure, capital goods and even the natural environment deteriorate. Take the recent NAIA blackout and the admission of its management they failed to maintain the standby generators as they should have.

This attitude among our government bureaucrats makes our worsening infrastructure gap even deadlier. We are unable to optimize use of such things as MRT trains and the tracks the trains run on due to lack of maintenance.

Often you hear about maintenance and repair budgets being spent for other things. Corrupt practices decimate what little resources are available for M and R in many government installations.

It isn’t just government. Look at some private buildings, including malls. I apply the rest room test to see how good a building’s management is.

Often enough the rest rooms, even in Glorietta which is managed by Ayala, leave much to be desired. The excuse is there are too many people using the facility. The only mall that I have consistently found to have well maintained restrooms is Rockwell and that’s because Tong Padilla is fastidious about it.

At NAIA, it is no longer surprising to have air conditioners that do not work or as what happened, power blackout for five hours. It is disgusting that P- Noy allows this mismanagement to go on. Sure, a president has a lot to worry about other than malfunctioning standby generators and that is reason enough to entrust such responsibility to capable people.

It is a good thing that DPWH Sec. Babes Singson refused to postpone any longer the needed maintenance for Ayala Bridge near Malacañang. Otherwise, a serious accident totally attributable to lack of maintenance would have been risked.

Apparently, it isn’t just us. Even in the West, maintenance and repair isn’t as sexy as innovation. But as one essay puts it, “maintenance and repair, the building of infrastructures, the mundane labor that goes into sustaining functioning and efficient infrastructures, simply has more impact on people’s daily lives than the vast majority of technological innovations.”

One of the serious failures of the Aquino administration is in infrastructure. P- Noy allowed the gap we already have to widen under his watch. That explains why in Metro Manila, in particular, the failure is felt daily and has resulted in widespread dissatisfaction with the administration.

Maintaining basic infrastructures has immense social importance… It should be kept away from politics as much as possible. But even in the US, President Obama had to wrestle with Congress to pass an infrastructure bill that Republicans had been blocking. It took a serious Amtrack accident near Philadelphia to get the bill finally approved.

In a sense, infrastructure failures – train crashes, bridge failures, flooding, daily traffic jams on EDSA and over NAIA – are manifestations of lack of leadership compounded by our dysfunctional political system. Our failure to prioritize infra upgrade and maintenance, as well as the insistence of politicians including P- Noy to appoint incompetent infra managers, is causing the social fabric to fray. That’s because most of those who suffer the most from inadequate infra are the poor and the middle class…

There has to be more honor and value placed on the mundane stuff of daily life that have to do with upkeep. Dealing with trash, for instance or replacing burnt out bulbs, or ensuring toilets flush.

Because our infrastructure is as inadequate as it is, we have to preserve what we do have to keep these infrastructures useful. It also isn’t as if we do not have the technical knowhow to keep our infrastructure functional.

Here is a reader reaction to the NAIA power blackout that happened due to lack of maintenance:

“If you ask the Meralco guy why tripping happens, they will tell you that their system trips because of overload in a particular area. If a certain part of the city suffers a brownout without any environmental intervention like storm or thunderstorm, it means there is a short in the line or there is an overload of power due to jumpers of establishments or residences. Meralco was telling the truth when they said their substation tripped because of an overload in their system going to the NAIA 3.

“Based on the initial update that only one of 10 generators did not start, it means the generator that did not start actually tripped. The generator also has a safety feature to turn off if there is a short in the wiring system.

“Even if Meralco can supply the electricity needed by NAIA 3 after 45 seconds, the electrical system of NAIA 3 cannot accept supply of electricity or else an electrical fire will result. The electrical engineers need time to determine the cause of tripping and remedy the short circuit inside the terminal.

“If I were P- Noy I would ask a third party electrical contractor to check the integrity of wiring, electrical sockets and even the aircon system. He should not believe a battery is the main cause why one generator did not start.

“A smart electrical engineer can just get one of the working batteries from one of the nine generators to start the one generator that powers up check in counters, x- ray machines, air con and lighting of these areas. It is like borrowing a battery from another car or using a wire jumper to juice up a weak battery of a hard starting vehicle.

“The problem is worse than what Engineer Lina or GM Honrado is telling the press.

“I do not expect P-Noy to be proactive at the late stage of the game. Let us hope, pray and cross our fingers there won’t be any more major blackout, or worse an electrical fire will occur in Terminal 3 in the next 80 days. The new president will have a lot on his or her plate to solve come 12pm of June 30.” Boo Chanco’s e- mail address is bchanco@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @ boochanco.