Busan Universal Rail Inc., the maintenance provider of Metro Rail Transit Line 3, said it delivered more than what was required under its contract, contrary to the claim of an official of the Transportation Department.
Charles Mercado, legal counsel of Busan, asked Transportation Undersecretary Cesar Chavez to explain his motive for spreading what Mercado described as “wrong” information about the true state of MRT 3 versus the actual delivery of contract obligations by the maintenance service company.
“We seek to correct the misinformation repeatedly being spread by DOTr Undersecretary Chavez. He keeps rehashing the wrong information as if to condition the public into viewing Buri negatively and to baselessly support his unjust plan to terminate Buri’s contract,” Mercado said in a statement.
“The DOTr undersecretary’s repeated charge to blame Buri for every glitch and train stoppage is also unfair not only to Buri but to the riding public as well,” he said.
Mercado said even in year 2000, when Japanese company Sumitomo Corp. was maintaining the system in MRT’s first year of operation, when the trains and rails were brand new and ridership was much less, the system already logged 1,492 glitches.
“That fact shows that the glitches are more reasonably due to design flaws – and not mainly maintenance issues. Through the years, the deterioration of the rails and passenger loading above the intended usage only worsened the system’s condition and resulted in more glitches,” Buri said.
“Undersecretary Chavez should be asked to disprove this evidence on the design flaws as opposed to insisting for the immediate cancellation of the MRT3 maintenance service contract,” it said.
Mercado said Buri submitted to the Transportation Department documentary and technical evidence to show the design flaws and their impact on the performance of the trains. He said Buri also repeatedly reminded the DOTr about the completion of the rail replacement, and even Transportation Secretary Arturo Tugade instructed MRT to review loading protocols.
“To set the record straight, it is untrue that Buri has not been procuring proper spare parts. When Buri started its contract in January 2016, only 40 of MRT’s 72 cars were running. These 40 cars were enough for only 13 three-car trains. The other cars were inoperable and had many missing parts. Since then, Buri fixed 28 cars to presently deliver the contract minimum of 18 trains for revenue operation” Mercado said.
“These became possible only because Buri aggressively executed its parts purchase plan. Buri has not been remiss in its maintenance operations, and the company weighs its responsibility seriously because it is important for the government’s capacity expansion objective” he said.
Mercado said that Buri regularly exceeded that minimum number of trains required and at times had 22 trains ready for use. “As such, Buri enables the MRT’s 91 percent fleet operability to constantly beat LRT’s averages of 77 percent for LRT-1 and less than 50 perk for LRT-2,” he said.
Mercado said “Buri’s accomplishment in fact contributed significantly to the increase in the average daily ridership from a little over 300,000 in January 2016 to recent figures exceeding 450,000 – even reaching 500,000 at times.”
Buri said it had not supplied any fake parts to MRT 3. “Buri is moving forward to meet its commitment of train reliability, and safety and comfort for the ridership,” the company said.