By Zia Khan/Staff Reporter
Construction work on some major road projects in Doha has been affected after supplies of raw materials including bitumen were suspended by Saudi Arabia due to a severe shortage hitting the entire Gulf region.
Officials at some of the construction companies in Qatar told Gulf Times yesterday that no activity is taking place at their project sites for almost a week now and there is no possibility of the situation getting resolved anytime soon.
“We are not doing anything at all these days … we are out of stock and new supplies are not coming in anymore,” said an engineer whose company undertakes work on the Salwa Road expansion project, a highway that dissects the city horizontally and leads up to border with Saudi Arabia.
An official, of another company working on projects of road related to the new airport, said the suspension might be related to some technical reasons or weather.
Bitumen, black tar that is used to prepare asphalt substance to carpet roads, is imported into Qatar and almost the entire Gulf from Saudi Arabia that is the largest producer of the material in the region.
The shortage, according to industry sources, hasn’t hit Qatar only but countries like Oman and Bahrain are also facing the crunch.
Company representatives said it is not for the first time that the supply of the same material is suspended.
Rather, it has been happening in the past for periods as long as a month, mostly due to price disputes between construction companies here and tar producer in Saudi Arabia.
The construction companies in Qatar are operating in a deregulated market and are responsible for all the deals including the import of manpower and materials themselves.
The government hardly interferes in any of their operational affairs except the fact that delays in project completion are less likely to be tolerated in most cases.
Such unforeseen hitches, commented one of the engineers, show how vulnerable the companies are when it comes to timely project completion related to infrastructure development.
Qatar is in a rush to construct several major new highways and refurbish existing network of arterial roads in a run up to hosting 2022 FIFA World Cup.
Construction work in progress on a Doha road.
