Despite the passage of about three and a half years since the launch of the plan by the Ministry of Works and the Public Authority for Roads and Land Transport, which aims to re-pave highways and internal roads, the condition of some roads remains unchanged, and the voices of those complaining about their worsening and increasing danger fall on deaf ears.
The plan, launched in the aftermath of the November 2018 rains, accompanied by pledges to pay more attention to the asphalt mix and improve the streets, the pledges seem to have met bureaucratic hurdles, administrative incompetence, slow implementation, and many other issues.
Those plying on the streets and highways in almost all regions of the country suffer due to the presence of potholes and rough patches of roads, the situation that has been ongoing for years and has failed to cool down tempers of angry motorists.
Large potholes not only are one of the causes of fatal accidents but damage the rims and tires which force car owners to replace them periodically at short intervals, due to their deterioration caused by the lack of efficient maintenance of the streets.
Despite millions of dinars are available annually, whether for maintenance work carried out by the Ministry of Works and the maintenance sector’s share of it is estimated at 50 million dinars from the budget over recent years, and despite the money allocated to the authority to spend on highway maintenance, nothing has changed.
Well-informed sources in ministry and PART said that both parties do not have a sufficient budget at the present time to complete the maintenance of roads.
Public Works sources stated that the maintenance sector budget, which amounts to about 50 million dinars annually, is divided into about 14 items, including the maintenance of government buildings and squares, and the share of internal road maintenance is about 12 million annually.
The sources added that despite the limited budget, the situation on the ground is that there are no maintenance contracts in most governorates at the moment, noting that the Capital Governorate, for example, has only a health contract, not a road maintenance contract, and in Hawalli there is a health contract and another for emergency and miscellaneous works, the latter ended in 2021, and the general maintenance contract for Hawalli, Rumaithiya, Hittin and Al Shuhada roads ended in January 2021, as well as the maintenance contract for Maidan Hawally.
She stated that most of the ongoing contracts have exhausted their budget due to reliance on them to fix road problems in different regions across the country due to the severe shortage of contracts.
The sources pointed out that the Public Works has a large number of contracts in the Central Agency for Public Tenders, and the ministry is waiting to approve the budget to sign those contracts to start the maintenance work.
