Multiple recent road emergencies, of all sizes, causalities and backgrounds, exhibit poor management, erroneous prioritization and discontinuous — not to say insignificant — supervision of the quality of road projects throughout several governments, including the current one. With this year’s rains, complications have multiplied with increasing severity on routes throughout the country, which entails monetary costs, opportunity costs and, above all, the lives of productive Guatemalans.
The reparations of road damages caused practically in every winter of the last two decades have been invoked by politicians and venal officials who see disasters as a piñata to distribute projects among relatives and not an opportunity to serve their country. Evidence of this harmful attitude is the loot of Q3 thousand 191 million for road repairs approved by the Congress presided over by the pro-government deputy Shirley Rivera a semester ago. The effect of such spending is imperceptible, if not non-existent, but those who pay for the daily mobility and logistics jams are the citizens, the productive population, companies on which hundreds of salaries depend, and also small businesses. It is unheard of that ministers and deputy ministers of Communications have served, including the current one, without being engineers or having experience in public infrastructure. An entire country ends up paying so much disability.
The supply of merchandise, fuel, agricultural products and an entire supply chain in Guatemala is at risk, not only due to the Villa Nueva accidents, but also due to possible sources of landslides, poorly attended or totally abandoned, on the roads to El Salvador, the Inter-American and the Atlantic.
Export operations are also compromised by delays in arrivals at ports, which in turn impact shipping costs and contract compliance. However, instead of rectifying, the ruling parties resort to evasion. Several officials, pro-government deputies and hordes of netcenterers reacted on social networks to criticism of the second disaster in Villa Nueva. They launched a blatant campaign to use the same fallacy: they copy and paste the excuse that landslides happen everywhere, even in developed countries.
Indeed, there is a climate impact throughout the planet, but in those countries there are quality alternative routes to move traffic, there are plans and diagrams of the drainage networks and repair work is carried out quickly, without neglecting the quality of the work, since there are accounting rules protected by technical regulatory entities and not in collusion.
It is possible —and necessary!— for Guatemala to have quality infrastructure, but to begin the transformation, the mechanisms for contracting and executing public works must be refined, the electoral participation of any State contractor must be prohibited, of which there are several in the current legislature; The Comptroller General of Accounts must fulfill its role and therefore, among the payroll to elect the new head there must not be any auditor related to the ruling party. Not one.
In addition, the Public Ministry must strive to achieve convictions in cases such as the Chimaltenango bypass, in order to set precedents. Citizen outrage is mixed with fear of other disasters, but it is necessary to move from fear to action to demand accountability from mayors, ministers and congressmen. In the long run, the worst avalanche has been that of the mud of mediocrities, fixes and shameless conflicts of interest.
