Mahmoud Ahmad
WE all have read about the giant sinkhole in Fukuoka in the northern shore of Japan’s Kyushu Island. The news about the sinkhole came more than a week ago on Tuesday, Nov. 8. The gigantic hole in the city’s downtown cut off power causing a local blackout, and also cut off water and gas supply to the most parts of the city. This collapse happened in a major street causing huge traffic jam. The giant sinkhole was located next to a busy subway station and dangerously close to many buildings.
If this incident had happened anywhere else in the world other than Japan, then they would have struggled to deal with a problem of such a big magnitude, but not in Japan. The way they handled this incident deserves admiration and we all need to salute the Japanese officials, who did the impossible to restore the road to its working state in a week’s time
We are not talking about a little hole in the road. The size of this hole was 30 meters in width and roughly 15 meters deep. A hole of this dimension would have been classified as a disaster anywhere, except in the Japanese officials lexicon. A committee was not formed consisting of many departments. We did not see departments exchanging blame and shirking responsibility while pointing fingers at each other. What came to the fore was the Japanese ethos — a disaster occurred and they immediately set about to work to fix it.
It was said that surmounting the impossible is a German trait. But on the evidence of what happened in Fukuoka, we can safely add Japan to the list of countries of overachievers, who do not know what impossible is.
As a Saudi witnessing this quick and clinical action after a near disaster threatened to stymie the works in Fukuoka, I found what the Japanese did was impressive. There are no words of praise on what the Japanese officials did. I may be overreacting. But I then compare what happened in Japan to what I see as apathy here, then one can understand my unreserved appreciation of what the Japanese did. I bring to notice many holes on our roads and many other delayed projects with no one fixing it for many months, maybe years. I am not exaggerating for when I pass next to these holes and note the neglect in fixing them then the immediate reaction that wells in me is, why can’t we be like these Japanese?
Japan did the impossible while also giving a free lesson to others on how to work quickly with high efficiency and with a sense of great responsibility while undertaking any work. This ethos they brought to bear while fixing the road in Fukuoka while swiftly bringing the situation back to normal.
I read an article on Nov. 15 in The Daily Mail questioning the performance of England in comparison to Japan while tackling similar issues. It asked, “How speedy are Japanese services compared to the sluggish repair in Manchester?” They talked about “two sinkholes that appeared in the Mancunian Way, a two mile long elevated motorway in Manchester, due to heavy rainfall in the northwest England, the first in August 2015 and the second a month later.” The report stated, “400 meters of temporary piping had to be laid down, as United Utilities described it as the ‘biggest emergency repair in its history’. A tunnel-boring machine had to be used to create temporary sewers and more than 10,000 tons of sandstone was excavated. Approximately 17,500 drivers had to find an alternative route during the entire process — causing absolute chaos around the city’s other road routes. And it took ten months to fix.”
That is England and compare their efforts to that of Japan in resolving the Fukuoka sinkhole in a jiffy. Imagine the English, especially their media, are asking why England, a leading First World nation, needed so much time and effort and a rather large dose of chaos to solve their sinkhole problems, while the Japanese set things right in a blink of an eye. I know that the English have a right to feel sad at the poor services provided, but the moot question is what would have happened if such a situation arose here? Do our municipality and the related departments have any clue to what action to take if such a situation arises? Or whether they would feel for the people and the need to act quickly to solve the emergency? Or show any feelings at all? Or just comment about the speedy work of fixing this hole? We should be reprimanded if we seriously waited for our officials to act, respond or commend?
I live in Al-Rawdah District in Jeddah where few years back the roads in the neighborhood were flattened and made new and smooth. We were happy for a while until the project to install pipes came so they had to dig the new roads to install the pipes and then cover it up in such a way that the once smooth roads had bumps and holes. We as residents do not care whether this was the responsibility of the municipality or the contractor, but the municipality did not hold anyone accountable and they left it at that. Worse still we, the residents, did not raise the issue to a level that would have got the municipality to act.
We as residents and drivers have become so used to such roads that sometimes we think this is all we’ll get, and we deserve such bad roads. The condition of roads in some parts of south Jeddah is even worse. I am sure other cities too are suffering from the same problem when it comes to bad roads. If the British officials were ashamed that the Japanese were better than them, then what would our municipal officials feel about themselves?
The reason for Japanese’s continuous success is not only their work ethics, but also their philosophy. No one should worry about a country that adopts and then adapts to the kaizen philosophy, a Japanese business philosophy of continuous improvement of working practices and personal efficiency. Maybe our officials in general who are dealing with the roads and other projects should take an intensive course in Japan to learn from them. Instead of learning the tools and techniques on how to finish a task, they should learn the Japanese mind and philosophy at work. Most of all, we need them to have feelings in their hearts so the next time a project was not done the right way, they would be the first to own up and say they feel ashamed of it.
— The writer can be reached at mahmad@saudigazette.com.sa
Twitter: @anajeddawi_eng
