The Audit Bureau has said that Ministry of Water and Electricity explanations for the failure of 1-billion-riyal sewer works to get off the ground “do not match reality.” The works in north and central Jeddah have been on hold after negligible beginnings, and Osama Faqih, the Chairman of the Audit Bureau, said, “consultant reports on the progress made in the works are not consistent with what the ministry says.” “The report with the Bureau shows that the contractor failed to carry out the works within set deadlines, obliging the mayoralty to halt them as a matter of procedure on the grounds that the company failed to meet contract conditions,” Faqih said. “The report cited the contractor's failures, notably the lack of manpower and machinery, facts which the ministry ignored in its letter to the Bureau which instead focused on other insignificant reasons in order to persuade the Bureau to extend the contract by 13 months.” Faqih sent two letters to the Minister of Water and Electricity expressing his doubts over the validity of the ministry's claims that the Mayor's Office, Jeddah's Traffic Police and other parties were responsible for the delays in the works. One of the letters states that “the contractor was in breach of work permit conditions and regulations”. According to Faqih, letters exchanged with the Water Directorate, the contractor and a consultant “confirm that the contractor was in violation of regulations and show that he was granted work permits by the relevant authorities”. “Our reports held the contractor solely responsible for the failures,” Faqih said. “I wonder, however, if the ministry was insinuating that all the sewer work sites should have been given to the contractor in one go, which would have been impossible given the nature of the project and further prevented by the fact that it requires connection to main lines.” According to Faqih, the construction developer “must have been fully aware of the impossibility of completing work at all sites simultaneously when he submitted his offer”, adding that Bureau consultants noted a “drastic shortage in the contractor's technical and administrative team”. “He must have also been aware that the contract was dependent on contracts for the introduction of the main lines which would in turn only be completed following the conclusion of other works,” he said. Faqih said that minimal progress made in the works refutes any claims that anyone other than the contractor is responsible, and he also rejected out of hand ministry suggestions that the redesigning of some project lines had caused delays. “Those lines are only 25 percent of the total length of the works, and in any case such redesigning is a common occurrence when constructing sewer lines,” he said.
