Ashghal holds a press conference to clarify the recent water overflow at Lebsayyer Interchange

The Public Works Authority held today a press conference presided over by H.E. Eng. Nasser bin Ali Al Mawlawi, President of the Public Works Authority 'Ashghal'. The press conference was open to all local media representatives to discuss and clarify the circumstances and reasons surrounding the water overflow at Lebsayyer Interchange (Interchange 42) on Dukhan Highway; that took place on Friday 11 September.

The authority had issued a press release on Wednesday 16 September to give an overview of the reasons behind the overflow until a press conference is held to further explain all the technical details that are difficult to include in a press release. Engineer Ahmed Al Sharif, Drainage Networks Operations and Maintenance Manager at Ashghal, gave a detailed and technical presentation in which he explained the nature of the site where the overflow of water onto the road took place. Eng. Al Sharif mentioned that Dukhan Highway was designed between 2002 and 2005 and was constructed and opened to public in 2008.

He also described the procedures that the authority usually takes on such occurrences and went over the storm water drainage facilities on Dukhan Highway Lebsayyer Interchange (Interchange 42), and displayed information about the heavy rains that fell in that particular location and played some video bits showing the intense and exceptional rainfall.

The presentation was followed by H.E. the President also reiterating that the Public Works Authority had taken all the necessary procedures as per the approved emergency plan to deal with such cases, and emphasized the following points:

• Ashghal dealt with the situation based on emergency plans and procedures.
• Ashghal is a responsible government body that is supervised and controlled by the concerned government entities, and it does not hesitate to transparently acknowledge any mistake and take action against any party that underperforms, Ashghal is also ready to submit any reports in this regards or for the concerned government entities to investigate the issue.
• Wasting resources and budgets happens when using design standards that exceeds the optimum accepted standards, dramatically increasing the projects costs without a reason except avoiding such an incident that only occurs a few times and has emergency plans to deal with it within a few hours. Those rare situations are dealt with through emergency plans and procedures, as it is not possible to design rain drainage systems or other engineering projects based on exceptional situations since this would be real waste of public money.
• The water overflow that took place in 2012 was in a different location that is five km away from Lebsayyer Interchange, and Ashghal dealt with it when it happened very transparently, and acknowledged that there was a design mistake. Action was taken against the responsible party, and Ashghal also took action on site back then. 
• After technical studies, it was clear to us that there were no technical or design defects in the mentioned interchange, but the heavy and unusual rainfall on the road and surrounding area that exceeded the network’s design capacity prevented it from coping with big amount of water. This was visible in the video that was shown during the conference and through the information Ashghal received in this regards.

H.E. the President pointed out that the Public Works Authority maintains a policy in place to make sure that any incident is looked into and investigated before providing any technical data so as to ensure that accurate answers are given. H.E. also emphasized that although there are no defaults in design, the authority still requested concerned departments to re-evaluate the design and prepare a comprehensive report. H.E the President mentioned that a meeting was held in the presence of H.E the Minister of Municipality and Urban Planning, Sheikh Abdul Rahman bin Khalifa Al Thani and municipality directors to discuss the emergency procedures that aim to reduce the impacts associated with such incidents.

Among the procedures discussed is the need for the presence of representatives from Ashghal at the National Command Centre in emergency situations as well as the deployment of emergency equipment such as water pumps and tankers in different locations in the country to reach the intended location faster rather than launching from one single location. At the end of the press conference, the media was given the chance to ask questions freely and openly and the questions tackled a number of issues, namely, the water overflow issue at Interchange 42 on Dukhan Highway, and other projects. H.E the president responded to all the questions in a transparent and clear manner.