In a hard-hitting report released yesterday, the Commission of Audit (CA) says that the original cables of the Taipa-Cotai Light Rail Transit (LRT) line not only fell below national standards, but neither did they comply with the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) technical standards stipulated in the tender documents, but were still accepted by the project consultant and the now defunct Transportation Infrastructure Office (GIT), indicating that there were “obvious failures” in the overall gatekeeping leadership.
The Audit Commission published its latest Value For Money (VFM) audit report on the investigation on the Taipa-Cotai LRT incident yesterday.
The LRT’s Taipa-Cotai section had initially been hit by a host of technical snags since it opened in December 2019, resulting in 18 cable failures in less than two years of operation, and once even ceased operation for half a year during which the government was forced to suspend the LRT passenger service in order to carry out the cable replacement work.
The report suggests that the Public Works Bureau (DSOP) needs to set up an effective mechanism to ensure that appropriate decisions are made at every management level, in line with safety requirements, the actual situation of Macau, and economic efficiency.
DSOP ‘highly’ respects
In response to the report, the Public Works Bureau (DSOP) said in a statement yesterday that it “highly” respects the audit report about the cable failures of the Taipa-Cota LRT line published by the CA yesterday.
The bureau underlined that when the light rail system began to invite bids for tender in 2009, the standards used were the common standards at that time, but with the improvement of relevant standards and technology, the technical requirements for cables have also been improved, and now the Taipa-Barra section, the Seac Pai Van section, and the Cotai-Hengqin section have adopted improved standards of cables.
The bureau also said that it has hired an independent third-party testing agency to arrange a series of sampling tests on the new cables that are in compliance with the new standards, so as to avoid similar problems occurring in the future.
This photo taken in the Commission of Audit’s (CA) new office in ZAPE yesterday shows its logo. – Photo: Ginnie Liang
