Quirós's negligence should neither be rewarded nor excused

It’s one of those freaks of nature. We’ve had a rainier rainy season than usual.

So it really couldn’t be helped when Panama City’s annual Christmas parade got soaked by a tropical cloudburst.

At the same time in San Miguelito, kids were playing in a cascade that the rains poured off of a bridge under construction along the elevated branch of the Corredor Norte that runs through their neighborhood, when soil and concrete on the rampart that rises above their homes gave way. Four boys were caught up in the landslide, and three lost their lives.

The Ministry of Public Works says it will investigate, but meanwhile the pundits of the political class have making their pronouncements. One said that the problem was faulty materials, which, it is urged, absolves both PYCSA and the ministry of all blame. Another said that it was the boys’ fault for playing near the unguarded construction site that passes within just a few feet of houses in which people live, which also, it is argued, absolves both PYCSA and the ministry of all blame.

A few days earlier, along the Trans-Isthmian Highway at Quebrada Lopez, not far from Colon City, the heavy rains washed away the soil under the road and a big section of one of the country’s most important transportation links just disappeared. The Ministry of Public Works says that it will get around to fixing it in January.

A few days before that, also in Colon, a road crumbling away at the edge ran a bus off the road and into a bus stop, and it was a minor miracle that nobody was killed.

In November, we had the fireworks accident at the National Stadium that killed one and injured 13 others, the deadly bus crash in Chiriqui caused by a crumbling Pan-American Highway, the collapse of the Casco Viejo’s historic Flat Arch and the road washout that left Sora isolated.

All unfortunate accidents. Things do happen.

However, they happen more often when those who are supposed to be taking care cut corners, neglect their duties, and ignore warnings that they should heed.

The PYCSA construction company chose to cut corners by building their elevated toll road right next to people’s homes in San Miguelito, without buying a proper right-of-way to better protect public safety. Residents have repeatedly warned that this is dangerous, but under Mireya’s government the profits of a Mexican developer count for more than the lives of San Miguelito’s kids so these warnings were blown off. To compound their reckless greed, PYCSA cut corners on guarding their dangerous construction site. We await the conclusions of various investigations --- not all of which are likely to be thorough and impartial --- to see if PYCSA also skimped on building materials and contributed to this tragedy in that fashion.

If the washouts of the Transistmica and the road to Sora, and the crumbling roads that caused the bus crashes in Chiriqui and Colon, took the Ministry of Public Works by surprise, that says unflattering things about the ministry. The undermining of a road by inadequate or damaged drainage is rarely sudden or unpredictable, unless inspection and maintenance have been neglected. But Mireya’s main concern is a noxious little road through a national park that will serve only herself, her relatives and a couple of neighbors, so the Ministry of Public Works has been paying more attention to that project than to the republic’s principal traffic arteries.

Likewise, although we still don’t know precisely what made the Flat Arch fall, we do know that the Moscoso administration officials whose job it was to monitor the condition of this and other fragile national historical treasures failed to do so.

As The Panama News has noted before, the fireworks incident at the stadium may well have involved a defective product, but it would have never have caused the death and suffering that it did if standard safety procedures had been employed. A firework that explodes in a launching tube that’s properly buried in the ground and properly separated from the other launchers will harm no spectators. But the Moscoso administration that grabbed control over the international baseball tournament to hog the limelight for itself now seeks to deny responsibility for neglecting its duty to oversee public safety at the event.

A few days before the San Miguelito tragedy, and ironically on a day when a fire on a ship caused some delays in canal transits, The Panama News received a press release from the Panama Canal Authority. The management pointed out the excellent safety record and efficient transit times since the waterway came under complete Panamanian control. Despite occasional mishaps, the canal does have a top-notch safety record. That’s no accident, but the legacy of a long-standing concerted effort to reduce risks and keep small maintenance problems from growing into large ones.

So what can we say about Mireya Moscoso appointing Public Works Minister Eduardo Quirós, whose ministry ignored citizen complaints and so let those little boys be buried under mud and rubble, whose ministry failed to properly monitor and maintain key roads and so exposed Panamanians to death, injury, inconvenience and substantial economic loss, to the Panama Canal Authority’s board of directors?

This is a terrible nomination, both for Panama and for the international shipping industry. Quirós has been a miserable failure at the head of the country’s public works program. Resignation, not promotion, is the proper thing for him.

editorial

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