JEDDAH: Many recently paved roads in Jeddah have been greatly damaged from the rainfall that occurred last week, and Sami Nimr, a civil engineer, says this is due to inadequate asphalting standards and unscrupulous contractors.
“Those small contractors use cheap materials and less-than-adequate materials when paving in order to save some cash,” said Nimr, referring to the subcontractors often hired by primary government contractors.
“The municipality should also pay more attention to monitoring the work of contracting companies to make sure they are abiding by international standards,” he added.
Although the city has released no official estimate yet on the extent of road damage to recently rain-soaked Jeddah, local infrastructure experts have tossed around the figure of SR500 million to fix the damage caused mainly by the loose soil washing away beneath paved roads, which causes sections of asphalt to collapse into vehicle-damaging potholes. The high number of water and sewage heavy vehicles also contributes to the rapid decay of roads in the city.
Ahmad Dahlawi, a young Jeddah businessman, said that the road in front of his company in Hamra district was repaved only three weeks ago. But after the rainfall, the road was a complete mess.
“The road fell into a worse condition than it was before the repaving,” he said.
This road, like many others in the city, was trenched to install sewage pipes as part of a massive yearslong project to replace the tens of thousands of septic systems currently used in much of the city with a proper urban sewerage system.
But, says Dahlawi, the repaving of the street after the pipeline was installed was shoddy. “The company had apparently repaved the street without any consideration to standards,” he said.
Ahmad A’id, a south Jeddah resident, said his neighbors were initially happy to see municipality contractors come in a few months ago to fill potholes.
But their happiness didn’t last for long. “The rain came as a blessing to expose immoral contractors who were obviously not working according to standards — all in order to make more profits,” he said.
The municipality recently implemented a citywide campaign to fill potholes, even providing a telephone number (940) for residents to report road damage.
A’id says the municipality should go after contractors and subcontractors that give a short shrift to the government and residents.
“Those companies should be responsible for repaving the roads at their own cost,” he said.
