Salem Sahab Al-Madinah A local newspaper recently quoted Makkah Mayor Osama Al-Bar as saying that the municipality canceled about 300 road digging permits granted to the Saudi Electricity Company because the contracting companies undertaking the digging work did not bother to cover up the ditches. The end loser in this win-or-lose process is the citizen. When the power company digs he will win the supply of the electricity and lose the municipal services as the ditches will remain uncovered. If the company does not dig, he will not have electricity in his home. Why do the electricity, telephone and water companies feel that the holes and ditches they have created to provide their services to the citizens are not their responsibility? They patch them haphazardly applying a small layer of asphalt. This is cheap work culminating in bad output. The layer of asphalt will crumple under the simplest of tests. It will be blown away not by heavy rains but by the smallest quantity of water leaking from a water pipe. This happens in Jeddah all the time and the municipality is turning a blind eye. I do not know if there is a procedure under which the municipality will inspect the resurfaced area to make sure that the filling and the asphalting of the ditches has been done properly or it solely relies on its trust in the contractor that he will be doing a good job. It seems that the responsibility has been evenly distributed between the contracting companies and the concerned government departments. The companies do a bad job and the municipalities only correct their bad work or ask them to do their jobs properly. Years will pass before the municipality discovers that the asphalting of some roads has not been done properly. Much of the public funds have been wasted on re-asphalting the streets. Some contracting companies will only apply a thin layer of asphalt on the old road without bothering to level the ground properly before they do the asphalting. Much has been written on the issue but so far there has been no effective response.
