The Streets of Buenos Aires and an Ineffective and Inefficient Entity
<p style="text-align:justify">This is the Urban Comprehensive Maintenance Agreements Body. It checks to see if the service companies that break the asphalt also do the repairs, and do the work by themselves. But in 2009 they only completed a third of the work planned and executed 65% of its budget. The AGCBA ran 170 streets, and detected 108 flaws as well as poor fulfillment to neighbors’ complaints.</p>
The Auditor General of the City of Buenos Aires (AGCBA, for its acronym in Spanish) found a body in charge of patching, paving, and maintenance of roads, with 30.2% of their 2009 goals met. The body is the Integral Urban Maintenance (EMUI, for its acronym in Spanish), which aimed to improve 150 thousand square meters of road and reached 45,363 square meters and used for the same period, 65.4% of its budget.
The program responds to EMUI maintaining the Sidewalks and Driveways Network. Depending on their goals, plan and execute works in the streets of Buenos Aires the audit concluded "the actions of the body has been inefficient to the state of the arteries of the city, and ineffective as to the intended goals."
How It Works
Besides the works carried out, the agency inspects assigned areas to companies which should pave the utilities when their install telephone and gas services, and to do that they have to break the asphalt.
For those repairs that involve breaking the asphalt, the service providers must be registered in the Register of Authorized Openings in Public Space. The Directorate General of Planning for Public Space (DGOEP, for its acronym in Spanish) is granting permission for breaks under the Scheduled Opening System (SAP). Once completed, the same company that did the work also makes the temporary or mechanical seal and informs the DGOEP. Here comes into play the EMUI, which has the responsibility of verifying the closure and, if successful, authorizing the signature, which paves the area to proceed to make the closure.
However, the audit found that on several occasions the authorized EMUI was decommissioning without the respective form authorizing the opening of the road. It was also found that sometimes, there were no records of the type of material used for the mechanical seal.
Moreover, the agency has an asphalt plant in 2350 Castañares Avenue, which provides the raw material needed for the completion of works. In 2008, the plant closed its doors after repeated allegations of irregularities, and only last year resumed its activities.
Walk Through and Neighbors
The Audit relieved 170 streets in EMUI’s work plan. According to the watchdog, the streets "shortcomings" were 108; 12 level differences in roads, 24 collapses, fissures and / or unevenness of roads, 30 by the existence of bumps and pits, deformations on 25 sidewalks and breakage and / or missing tile, cord breakage in 13 and four by the poor condition of the ramps for the disabled.
Moreover, the AGCBA took a sample of complaints by neighbors to the Directorate General of Community Care. As a result they scored 226 claims surveyed in March 2009, the scheduled settlement date was on November 18th of the same year, 36.3% were not answered and 10.6% were poorly served. In August 2010 the EMUI itself reported that it had "proceeded to the respective repair" of the streets observed. However, considering the date set for the requested repairs in the claims, the watchdog says that the system was "inefficient" because, according to a report from the Department of Neighborhood Care TWT, in 2009, only 0.95% of the claims were met.