Feasibility of the Enacting of the“Public Utility Performance Improvement and Maintenance Act” in Taiwan

In recent years, a series of natural disasters combined with a lack of adequate management practices for the maintenance of public utility has resulted in repeated instances of loss of property and life in Taiwan. For example, in 1999 the collapse of an decrepit Taipower pylon resulted in a national power outage; in 2000 the Pingtung Bridge collapsed; in 2004 the Shimen Resevoir was forced to stop providing water to Northern Taiwan for three weeks after Typhoon Aere left the island; and in 2008 several injuries and deaths resulted when the Houfeng Bridge along with several others collapsed after heavy rains from Typhoon Sinlaku. While there is a certain amount of inevitableness to natural disasters and the consequences of climate change, blame must also be assigned to the government’s long-term attitude of giving precedence to building projects over maintenance and the resulting budgeting shortages, lack of human resources, and an inadequate organizational structure for meeting maintenance requirements. By comparison, advanced countries such as the U.S. and Japan have all established special acts for improving out-dated transportations systems and damaged dikes and drawn up 5-, 15-, 30- and 50-year plans for renewing various types of public utility.
Given this, the government should draw up a “Public Utility Performance Improvement and Maintenance Act” to serve as a legal basis for the maintenance, rehabilitation, and reconstruction of the public utility. Fortunately, I had the opportunity to be assigned the task of drawing up a draft of such an act. In the course of doing so, I and a supporting team carried out research on related Acts in the U.S. and Japan and reviewed 107 dowestic acts/ sop s/manuals currently in place in Taiwan. We also met with and interviewed scholars in related areas affiliated with both public and private institutions and held seminars to collect as much related information and input as possible. The resulting draft contained 16 articles in addressing issues concerning rating mechanism, periodic inspections, mid-termprograms integrationbody,ranking scheme and prioritized execution. A review of the draft showed that it was feasible to put into effect; however, concerns about a long, unpredictable review process in the Legislative Yuan led us to look into putting forth the “Public Utility Performance Improvement and Maintenance SOP”. In addition to requiring the relevant construction authorities to include maintenance costs and methods in their reviews of future projects, this Act calls for the preparation of a maintenance manual at the completion of each project that would specify the agency in charge of maintenance and insure corresponding funding as well as including relevant suggestions and follow-up research projects in order to implement the concept of sustainable development and promote the sustainable development of public utility.