Most service delivery protests arose from municipalities’ failure to do elementary maintenance, Minister in the Presidency Trevor Manuel said.
“It is necessary to remind ourselves that beyond the temptations of the great and the grand new projects lies the responsibility to ensure that proper and regular maintenance is undertaken,” Manuel said in a speech prepared for delivery.
He was giving a graduation address at the faculty of engineering at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, of which he is chancellor.
Manuel said: “It doesn’t matter whether your assignment covers rail-track, power stations, transmission lines, water schemes, petrochemical refineries, roads, elementary stormwater schemes or, as the inhabitants of Louisiana will attest, the scheme of levees designed to keep water out of the city.
“The failure to maintain any part of this rapidly wipes out the initial infrastructure investment.”
Other professionals might be able to mask the lack of maintenance, but engineers could never do this, Manuel said.
“Maintenance tasks are far less grand than new big projects, but certainly no less important.”
He said while the “era of high finance” had passed, the present was now “the era of engineering”, which was what society needed to transform.
“The challenges are all enormously important engineering challenges and... there are few that can be claimed as exclusive to one or the other engineering discipline.”
Manuel said the arrival of “the era of engineering” came laden with the demand for change in how engineers behaved.
“It is important that engineers everywhere approach the new era with humility.
“Much as the possibilities that present themselves make us drool for action, we must remember that many of the problems of the past, including the now unfashionable carbon-belching machines are the product of engineers from a different era,” Manuel said.
“It is necessary to remind ourselves that beyond the temptations of the great and the grand new projects lies the responsibility to ensure that proper and regular maintenance is undertaken,” Manuel said in a speech prepared for delivery.
He was giving a graduation address at the faculty of engineering at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, of which he is chancellor.
Manuel said: “It doesn’t matter whether your assignment covers rail-track, power stations, transmission lines, water schemes, petrochemical refineries, roads, elementary stormwater schemes or, as the inhabitants of Louisiana will attest, the scheme of levees designed to keep water out of the city.
“The failure to maintain any part of this rapidly wipes out the initial infrastructure investment.”
Other professionals might be able to mask the lack of maintenance, but engineers could never do this, Manuel said.
“Maintenance tasks are far less grand than new big projects, but certainly no less important.”
He said while the “era of high finance” had passed, the present was now “the era of engineering”, which was what society needed to transform.
“The challenges are all enormously important engineering challenges and... there are few that can be claimed as exclusive to one or the other engineering discipline.”
Manuel said the arrival of “the era of engineering” came laden with the demand for change in how engineers behaved.
“It is important that engineers everywhere approach the new era with humility.
“Much as the possibilities that present themselves make us drool for action, we must remember that many of the problems of the past, including the now unfashionable carbon-belching machines are the product of engineers from a different era,” Manuel said.
- TimesLive
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