Municipality to probe scaffolding accident

JEDDAH: The Jeddah Municipal Council has requested the mayor’s office to furnish a detailed report on how and why a scaffolding at the bridge project carried out at the intersection of Tahliah Street and Prince Majed Street collapsed. The council said it needed the report to issue a statement to the public about the incident.
On Saturday, the council said its ninth periodic meeting’s recommendations also included a request of a report on the stages achieved regarding cleanliness, rodent control, street lightening, and the tackling of potholes in the city. Most complaints the council received from people concentrated on these issues, it said. The mayor’s office has recently contracted five new companies for keeping the city clean. The new companies will cover nine Jeddah areas and will start operating next year, precisely after 150 days.
The council’s committee on transport and roads recommended a faster implementation of solutions to traffic congestion at several locations, and called on the Traffic Department director to attend the council’s meeting to discuss traffic problems in the city and come out with his visions for tackling them. The committee’s chairman, Mansour Nazer, said his committee was discussing traffic jams that now occur east of the Jeddah highway after Braiman Bridge had been removed. People drivers often get stuck in these jams.
In the next meeting, the Jeddah mayor’s office will carry out a Project Life Cycle presentation that would explain the phases of any project including its idea, factors affecting it positively or negatively, its cost, how to manage it, and analyze the factor for it success.
Wadi’a Abolhamayel, director general of bridges and tunnels at the mayor’s office, said the project at the intersection of Tahliah Street and Prince Majed Street is a vital one that will soon be completed to join the several bridges and tunnels recently opened in the city.
On the scaffolding accident, he said a technical committee had been formed to investigate it. The scaffolding that collapsed was used to prop up beam No. 19. A replacement beam is being made, he said.
He also said the project contractor would be fined for the delayed execution.
The technical investigation committee includes an international consultant who will study the incident, according to the deputy mayor for projects and construction, who added that soon a scientific report would be issued detailing what happened, its causes, and ways to avoid it in the future.