National Works Agency (NWA) boss E G Hunter admits that there has been a reactive approach to maintenance of the island’s road network and other infrastructure over the years, rather than a pre-emptive strategy, but says a number of factors are to blame.

“We react to events, rather than have a preventative ethos,” he said yesterday at a meeting of the Infrastructure and Physical Development Committee of Parliament, which examined a report submitted by the agency against the background extensive road network and infrastructure damage caused by weeks of heavy rain resulting in flooding, breakaways, and landslides across the island.

Hunter pointed to the age of the infrastructure, inadequate funding, and an emphasis on repairing damage as factors affecting the state of the 5,000 kilometres of roads for which the NWA has jurisdiction, 55 per cent of which is now in bad condition.

“The fiscal reality is that the budget is prioritised towards damage repair, not damage mitigation,” the report said.

According statistics in the report, the number of bad NWA roads across the island have moved from 48 per cent to 55 per cent over the past 20 years. There has also been a nine per cent decline in the number of roads in fair condition, and roads considered good have gone up by only two per cent over the period.

Municipal corporations are responsible for another 15,000 km of roads across the island, while farm roads account for 1,500 km, and there are some 4,000 km of community roads.

Hunter said the works agency’s concerns have been long documented, pointing to the a 2009 excerpt from the Vision 2030 policy, which stated that lack of adequate funding for periodic maintenance has led to “early failure” of roads, even when standard maintenance is carried out. The agency said then that regular and planned maintenance have been replaced by repatching of previously patched areas, stressing that this is not a sustainable approach as it does not address the fundamental causes of road failure.

The report submitted to the committee showed a steady decline in expenditure on road and other infrastructure maintenance, with a budget slashed by about half in the past three years, moving from $6.2 billion in 2017/18 to $3.8 billion this fiscal year.

A breakdown of maintenance expenditure from 2015 to 2020 reveals that one per cent of the budget goes towards disaster mitigation, 26 per cent to maintenance of roads and structures, seven per cent to emergency repairs, seven per cent to river training, and 11 per cent to the cleaning of gullies.

Hunter argued that the matter of the integrity of road construction is moot, given the age of the majority of the island’s road network.

He said this was “significantly less important than the issue of maintenance”, pointing out that ponding and flooding are natural outcomes of poor and old drainage systems.

Hunter said, even if drainage systems had been cleaned on schedule, it would still be inadequate for current weather and development patterns.

The worldwide standard, he said, is that within seven years after construction a road begins to deteriorate and needs intervention. After 14 years another intervention must be made, and by the 20-year mark it’s time for reconstruction.

The works agency CEO said routine maintenance — the works more frequently undertaken by the agency — is significantly less costly than periodic maintenance.

“There are several competing demands on the scarce resources of Government, so there is a tacit acceptance that although the knowledge of what is to be done is there, the wherewithal of Government to be able to faithfully subscribe to this paradigm is limited,” he stated.

He said the expenditure since 2015 indicate that for six years the allocation voted on by Parliament has been “rather sparse”, stressing that he was not casting blame but noting the facts.

For example, bridge construction has remained constant at $70 million for each of the last five years. “When you get $70 million per year to build bridges and we have about 600 bridges you can get two tiers and maybe half of a slab. The fact is that there is very little you can do,” he said.

The budget for gully cleaning has sat at $82 million per year for the period, and emergency repairs remained at $54 million.

“A plausible interpretation of this data is that the Parliament initially votes us a minuscule budget and on the occasion of an event there is a top-up. So we basically are reacting to events rather than to have a structured, strategic approach to the issue of maintenance. I’m sure the reasons are understandable, but the truth is that the maintenance budget is not what it ought to be,” Hunter said, adding that despite the constraints the agency spends its allocation efficiently.