Manifest Negligence
Lack of maintenance, bureaucratic hurdles, and internal conflicts put at risk the operability of the El Cajón dam, one of Honduras's main energy assets
The Francisco Morazán hydroelectric plant, better known as El Cajón, is experiencing progressive deterioration in its infrastructure, from machinery to housing, evidencing the absence of necessary preventive maintenance, which should periodically verify the optimal condition of mechanical installations, manufactured abroad and costly to repair, including turbines.
After conducting investigations and on-site interviews, our colleague newspaper El Heraldo and its Plus team have concluded that there is a conflict of competencies and functions between technical and administrative staff, causing chaos regarding which area is responsible for which work.
Additionally, the National Center for Technical Training (Cenacapt) has seen a reduction in staff numbers, affecting the supply of spare parts, as well as maintenance, which is now limited to provisional, immediate, palliative measures.
On the other hand, a legal element, the State Procurement Law, prevents decision-making unless cumbersome and complex procedures have been completed, which consume time and block urgent initiatives.
Excessive centralization concentrates authority in senior management located in the capital, a arrangement that prolongs regional and local decision-making, with consequent increasing deterioration and rising costs.
Housing conditions in the camps represent an attack on the health and safety of personnel: they are practically uninhabitable due to both their deterioration and humid climatic conditions.
A comprehensive, functional reengineering is required, with clearly delineated and defined functions, attributions, and competencies, avoiding duplications and overlaps.
We await the intervention of the Superior Court of Accounts to define the functions of the administrative management of the Francisco Morazán dam, in addition to the audit to be carried out by the comptroller body.
Time is advancing rapidly; inertia, apathy, and indifference constitute negative factors to the detriment of the greatest asset our country has for clean energy generation.
If the current immobility and frictions in the bureaucratic structure persist, Honduras runs the danger of becoming progressively paralyzed.
A sense of urgency must immediately replace the false belief that everything is proceeding optimally.
Being an extremely poor country, with dramatic inequalities in income and opportunities, highly indebted, we squander scarce funds, both due to serious acts of corruption with consequent impunity, and due to waste of public funds, including the material deterioration of publicly owned equipment and machinery that lack proper maintenance.
This lamentable situation also occurs in hospitals, in aircraft and vehicles - with consequent accidents and loss of life - in addition to happening in power generation plants, the subject of this editorial.
