Panama Canal unions demand external inspection of locks after leaks revealed

PANAMA CITY, November 25th, 2015 (EFE) Seven unions representing Panama Canal workers on Wednesday demanded an “independent” external inspection and audit of the third-locks project, the centerpiece of a $5.25 billion expansion of the interoceanic waterway, prior to delivery by the contracting consortium.

Video obtained and published by ICR News and other media outlets in September showed water pouring through fissures in the new lockheads.  Despite the revelation, the Panama Canal Authority, or ACP, said in September it was sticking to its April 2016 launch date.

“When we talk about an external inspection and audit of the works, we’re referring to one in which those doing the inspecting and auditing do not belong to and are not associated with the administration of Jorge Quijano and Roberto Roy,” the unions said in a joint statement.

“By not having been transparent in managing information about the problems with (the expansion), they became part of the problem.”

Quijano is the head of the Panama Canal Authority, or ACP, which operates and manages the waterway, while Roy is the canal affairs minister and chairman of the ACP’s board.

The locks contract with the GUPC consortium “was for $3.1 billion (and they) should last for 100 years. Those are the benchmarks for the audits we’re asking for,” they said.

Unions representing nearly all of the canal’s 10,000 workers across a range of specialties signed the statement.

Referring to “engineering problems” with the new set of locks, the unions’ leaders said they “could no longer be hid by the GUPC and the ACP” because “the force of gravity and the Internet” brought them to the public eye.

They said the Panamanian public’s trust in the GUPC had plunged and that “we no longer can afford to blindly believe what this consortium tells us.”

The unions also went on to say that Quijano and Roy had earned a “place of dishonor alongside the GUPC” with their lack of transparency about issues involving the expansion.

They called on the ACP’s board and civil society to support an inspection to verify the real conditions of the new structures, as well as an “independent financial audit.”

The GUPC has ordered extra steel reinforcement of the locks after water leaks were visible more than a month ago in one of the new lock heads on the Pacific side, while the consortium also continues to demand that the ACP cover more than $3 billion in alleged cost overruns.

The third set of locks is scheduled to open to world trade in April 2016, according to the GUPC and the ACP, enabling the inter-oceanic waterway to accommodate so-called post-Panamax ships, which hold up to 12,500 20-foot-long containers and are three times bigger than what the canal can currently handle.

RELATED: Panama Canal’s new locks are leaking. Really leaking. (VIDEO)