‘Hope lies with MPW to face incessant rains this winter’
Road repairs neglected: report
KUWAIT CITY, Nov 29: The meteorologists continue to warn of the possibility of rain lashing the country during the current winter, and attention is automatically directed towards the Ministry of Public Works (MPW), hoping that this time it will succeed in dealing with the rain water and prevent the earlier scenarios of parts of the country temporarily submerging in knee deep water in some areas and such scenarios were common over past five years and there will be no repetition, reports Al-Qabas daily.
The responsibility for dealing with rainwater falls mainly on the maintenance engineering sector in the ministry, which is primarily concerned with the condition of the rainwater drainage network and the sewers that follow it, which calls for asking a question about the status of the sector itself and its condition because this directly affects the readiness.
The sector consists of two main departments, which are road maintenance, sanitation and buildings, and approximately 5,000 employees work in them in the different governorates, constituting more than a third of the ministry’s employees.
According to what informed sources revealed to AlQabas, the building maintenance sector has almost not assumed any tasks in recent years, after many ministries took over the tasks of maintaining their buildings themselves, so the role of the administration and its employees is limited to maintaining its building, its external sites and some state facilities, such as the Grand Mosque.
As for road maintenance, the situation appears to be worse. While the administration is entrusted with the responsibility of maintaining the internal roads and the rain and sewage networks, the reality indicates that there is a chronic problem represented by the lack of contracts and the insufficient budget for the sector.
According to the sources, most of the contracts for rain have expired, and there are 4 governorates, namely: Hawalli, Jahra, Ahmadi and the capital, in which there are currently no contracts for rain, in contrast to the existence of contracts in only two governorates, which are Farwaniya and Mubarak Al-Kabeer.
The sources added that this situation prompted the ministry earlier to request the exception of 6 contracts for the sector to be presented in the form of practices, due to the importance of this matter in terms of preparing for rains, but the Central Agency for Public Tenders did not respond to the request.
With the budget finally approved, the ministry is expected to start preparing these contracts to start offering and awarding procedures.
The sources expected that the sector would witness a turbulence in the coming days, in light of the overwhelming state of anger that prevailed in the aftermath of the flooding of some streets in the recent past.