Seven years after the work was inaugurated, there is still no delivery receipt.
Juan Carlos Pulido and his cousin were among those who ran to shore on August 12, 2018 when an old ship adrift approached the pedestrian bridge that connects Durán with Santay Island. Accustomed to running the 678 meters in length that this structure has, they did not imagine that this would be the last day they would do sports there, since more than three years after the collision and two years since its repair, the bridge is still closed.
This media requested information, on November 9, from the Ministry of the Environment about why the passage through the bridge is not enabled, whose repair cost $ 5 million and was paid by the company that owns the boat that caused the accident. The reply came a month later, by email.
“This work is in the hands of the contractor company Bueno & Castro, which is why it has not been delivered to the contracting entity,” which is the Ministry of Urban Development and Housing (Miduvi), replied the communication direction of the Ministry of the Atmosphere.
El Universo requested information by email from the contracting company to find out what state the work is in, but after a week it has not received a response.
It is the responsibility of Miduvi to correctly receive the delivery of the work to make use and administration of it, warns the Ministry of Environment. And he adds that “since the pedestrian bridge is a work not delivered, it cannot be disposed of without the respective communication of completion of work for use and administration.”
The answer shows that, although the bridge was inaugurated on September 16, 2014 during the mandate of Rafael Correa and used by the people until August 12, 2018, neither in those four years of use nor in the next three that it has Inoperative since the collision of the ship, the final delivery-receipt certificates of the bridge and the roadways of section 2, Durán-Santay, have been signed, something that was done in section 1, Santay-Guayaquil.
The bascule bridge (an iron and cement infrastructure) and the path on the island (made of sheets of a mixture of wood and plastic known as WPC) are part of a single work, the “undelivered”, but only the second part It has faults that should be repaired, the bridge already fixed two years ago does not present any damage.
In the Lenín Moreno government it was not opened and now in Guillermo Lasso’s it is decided that, as long as the bureaucratic procedure is not fulfilled, it cannot be used, when four years before the accident the pedestrian walk was allowed.
Without a solution, then, the Duraneños will have to add more time – it is not known how much – to the three years and four months that they have already been unable to visit the island that belongs to this canton.
“Getting to Durán by airway and crossing the other bridge to La Santay should be in some plan, the communities cannot continue to be isolated,” says user Vanessa Lamar.
“You have to think about tourism, but also about sports”, complements Carlos Valazco, who used to walk on the bridge, without going into the island, since he only traveled one kilometer every day in the round trip of the pedestrian crossing.
But the Tourism portfolio has no interference in the reopening of this bridge.
“Once there is delivery of the work by the contractor to Miduvi, by means of the final delivery-receipt certificates, the Duran-Santay bascule bridge can be reopened,” says the Ministry of the Environment to this medium in your written reply.
Ambiente admits that damage persists on the roads inside Santay. “The wetland conditions on the island have caused wear and tear on the facilities, for which repairs must be made through the contractor company” which has not yet delivered the work inaugurated seven years ago, but those repairs, insists the entity, they must be done “under the supervision of the Miduvi.” It was this portfolio of State that requested the construction of the bridges and roads.
An audit of the Comptroller’s Office of this work, for the period 2014-2016, confirms some anomalies, such as the fact that no relevant information was published in the public procurement portal or that the additional works in section 2, Durán-Santay, they have not been legalized.
The measures contemplated in the environmental management plan were not implemented, in the embankment foreseen in the complementary contract for the construction of the Duran-Santay pedestrian bridge and bikeway, material was placed that did not comply with the planned design, work orders were approved outside of The deadline and the audit reports are incomplete, concludes the Comptroller’s Office in an 82-page report.
Jorge Wated, who in 2018, when the ship collided with the bridge, was director of the Works Contracting Service (Secob), an entity created to contract public sector works, explained that he had not received section 2, Durán- Santay, to the contractor because he had to make the change of a better quality material for the road, criticized since its inauguration because they gave rise to countless holes.
“If the changes are not made, we could not receive his work and if we do not reach an agreement we will have to go through legal channels,” Wated already warned three years ago, when the bridge closed.
As long as the work is not received and the bureaucratic tangle about its management is resolved, the bridge that today is cordoned off with a flimsy plastic fence that surrounds the access stairs, which look maintenance-free, dusty and rusty, will remain closed.
There, a woman who stands guard says that “the passage is prohibited” when asked why it is not possible to walk, at least on the cement bridge, which does not seem damaged and offers a wonderful view of Guayaquil.
“There is simply the order that no one can pass, the explanation I do not know, so I can not report anything,” continues the guard from inside a booth where tourists used to be registered and bicycles were rented to walk along the path by Santay.
“We know that on this side of Santay, in front of Durán, the roadways are useless, they are totally destroyed and we know it because once we cross the Guayaquil side and reach that shore, everything is with holes and undergrowth,” they say. adventure the Pulido cousins, who decided to return to the island despite the accident that caused a great scare in 2018.
A neighborhood committee of Abel Gilbert asks Mayor Dalton Narváez that, although the bridge is not within his jurisdiction, intercede with the government of Guillermo Lasso to open the bridge, which was repaired in December 2019, during the Lenín Moreno regime , although it took 16 months after the collision and did not receive visitors again.
Open walks to Santay Island from Monday to Sunday, but the trails are a risk for damage
It is that shortly after the bridge was repaired, the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in Ecuador and with it came the time of quarantines, curfews and restrictions on access to public places, but those measures gradually disappeared relaxing this year and even the Lasso government has promoted vaccination as a pillar of reactivation.
The Durán-Santay and Santay-Guayaquil bridges, with their respective highway, meant an investment of $ 11,582,677 that is not used today, as the last section is also closed because last October 18 it suffered the fourth collision of a boat since which was installed at the height of El Oro street.
The degree of impact of the crash of the Brazilian ship Cisne Branco is not yet known. “The Ecuadorian Navy, as well as Miduvi and the Ministry of Transportation, as entities responsible for this work, have collected this information and are in the process of issuing the corresponding technical reports,” says the Ministry of Environment.
Until before this latest accident, 53,047 people had arrived on the island via the Guayaquil bridge, a little more than double the 25,711 visitors in 2020.
The growth of visitors, through Guayaquil, was attributed to the end of the confinement that occurred in the initial year of the pandemic, but in Durán its inhabitants are still waiting for some authority to decide that they can now use the bridge that was repaired in December like now. , but two years ago, and back to normal on this side of the shore. (I)
Paul is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment and general news. He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established herself as a respected voice in the industry.
