11/01/2021
11/01/2021
When the parliamentarians run a strange race to be part of an investigation committee, it means there are some sick people out there and manipulation cannot be ruled out.
We have lived through four lean years in the shadow of a National Assembly plagued with rampant corruption. This is evidenced by what the former Minister of Public Works, Jenan Bushehri who was subjected to arbitrary treatment which prompted her to resign, as well as pushing other honest officials to step down.
All this subsequently made it easier to challenge many of their reform decisions, including returning contracting companies and engineering offices to work again despite the question marks on their performance and despite the confirmation of their inefficiency including the Central Tenders Committee and the Audit Bureau.
The National Assembly’s report on the 2018 rain crisis and the Mangaf Bridge Tunnel is part of the corruption situation in the country, which required setting up Parliamentary Investigation Committee, chaired by Abdullah Fahad, which took more than a year to prepare a report, although it did not exceed 15 pages, and the rest are photos, documents and testimonies.
The former deputy and distinguished member, Ahmad Al-Fadhel previously revealed the poor preparation of the report and how it neglected, perhaps intentionally, all the objections of the concerned authorities, such as the Audit Bureau and ignored the viewpoint of the Central Tenders Committee, and the possibility of the involvement of institutions, offices and corrupt companies, however, and for some reason perhaps known, all of this was overlooked by the Parliamentary Investigation Committee.
I had previously praised the Minister of Public Works, and considered that she would complete what Minister Bushehri had started, and that she would issue orders to expedite the solution to the problem of pot-holed roads in almost every street, and her beginning was reasonable, but it seems that the forces of corruption that overpowered those who preceded her have exhausted her and limited her from her desire for reform, as these authorities were and are still stronger than the Ministry, and inevitably stronger than the exhausted Public Authority for Roads Transport and some of those working under the dome of the Abdullah Al-Salem Hall.
Therefore, some contracting companies will continue to steal, and the devastation of some new roads has begun to appear with the last heavy rain fall, and for three years I have still been hesitant to change my windshield, almost every week there is another new small click on it.
Some believe that the problem of Kuwait’s roads is similar to the rest of the state’s chronic problems, such as education, health, petroleum, investment, and income diversification, which are not related to an individual as much as it is related to a government approach that has been going on for more than thirty years in the absence of any clear future outlook.
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By Ahmad alsarraf