The Governmental Center for Testing and Quality Control, affiliated to the Ministry of Works, has canceled the accreditation of 3 asphalt factories for violating the requirements. Informed sources revealed the ministry “has spent 6.6 billion dinars over the course of 10 years, without significant changes in the condition of the country’s streets and roads, which are as the situation has gone from bad to worse, year after year.
The sources told Al-Qabas that the step came after the team of engineers of the Field Asphalt Division of the Road Laboratories Department monitored the violation of the three factories to the approved technical specifications, which was represented in the presence of natural sand in the cold cones, on the conveyor belt for materials, inside the roaster, and in the factory deformations during production.
The sources stated that “the lack of oversight, whether on asphalt factories or during the process of laying asphalt on roads, caused the loss of large sums of money in the past years, and is one of the reasons for the continued flying of gravel despite all this spending.”
The sources indicated that the total actual expenditure of the Works during the past 10 fiscal years, that is, from the fiscal year 2011-2012 to the fiscal year 2021-2022, amounted to 6.6 billion dinars out of 7.6 billion allocated to the ministry, with an expenditure rate of 87%, indicating that the largest share was spent on the implementation and maintenance of roads, compared to the rest of the other sectors in the ministry.
The sources indicated that the share of the Public Authority for Roads and Land Transport during the last 8 years (starting from 2014-2015 until 2021-2022) amounted to 2.7 billion dinars, out of 3 billion allocated to the authority during the same period, with a disbursement rate of 92%.
The sources pointed out that all the funds spent by the authority were allocated either for new projects, or for the maintenance and furnishing of existing highways, yet the complaint still exists about the low level of roads in the country, which requires swift and decisive measures to rectify the situation.
Controls for handling asphalt plants include:
— A unified system for qualifying asphalt-producing factories throughout the country
— An approved list of factories that provide mixtures for the projects of the Ministry and the Authority
— Imposing strict and sustainable control of production processes in factories
— Excluding any factory from the accreditation list… if it violates the requirements
— Withholding supply to the projects of the Ministry and the Authority from any factory that violates it
