World-class lessons from Singapore

Maj Gen Raj Mehta (retd)

OUR plane landed at Singapore’s Changi airport in the pelting rain. ‘Cheer up,’ my peppy co-traveller said. ‘You will reach your hotel bone-dry; our infrastructure is the world’s best.’ That was Singaporean-Chinese Cheng, the back-from-Harvard super-specialist doctor. Guided by him, we indeed arrived at the hotel bone-dry despite the wind-swept rain. We had covered 24 km on the super-smooth, safe, superbly designed, signposted and cambered asphalt road amid moderate traffic; the drainage system had absorbed water like blotting paper.

Over tea on our 12th-floor room with a view, Raju, our loquacious Singaporean-Tamil concierge, pointed out a road repair team in luminous jackets and helmets, with JCBs and pneumatic rigs. ‘They are going to check defective utilities and ensure traffic resumption by dawn.’ Seeing my disbelieving expression, he laughed: ‘Sir, the team has 12 hours to do its work. If the supervisor fails, he is awarded demerit points; he faces suspension or sacking if there are lapses on his part.’

After dinner, I ventured out to the site cordoned off by luminous ‘work-in-progress’ tape and precise diversion markers. I struck up a conversation with tablet-wielding site supervisor Edwin, a re-employed Singaporean-Christian military veteran. He told me that repair, maintenance and inspection were guided by a bible, the Singapore Land Transport Authority’s Code of Practice for Works on Public Streets (2008). Supervisors are civilians, with only emergency work being done by the Singapore Public Works Department. They must have minimum five years’ experience and a government certificate in road construction/maintenance or a degree/diploma.

They need to present a comprehensive repair/maintenance plan with sketches/images, specifying the work duration, cost estimates and restoration of utilities as per the code. Edwin said his work would be ‘surprise-checked’ by strict government inspectors before according approval. They examine the quality of work, adherence to norms and whether adjacent utilities had been inadvertently damaged. The focus is on the safety of both road users and workers. His tablet had the under-surface utilities’ layout in various perspectives with inspection points marked every 200 metres along the sidewalks.

Portable machines X-rayed roads, bridges, culverts and pillars to identify weak spots for repair. Edwin stated that under a radical time-bound programme, launched in 2018, all underground utilities were being encased in concrete tunnels accessible through manholes for speedy repair without disrupting surface vehicular movement. ‘We have stray occurrences of water accumulation, blocked drains, poor construction/oversight, sir,’ he quipped. But there was the fear of punishment, besides respect for the law and national pride in seeking a world-class status. ‘Hum honge kaamyab ek din,’ I thought.

#China