DOHA: Some low-lying areas across the country continue to be waterlogged after incessant rains lashed Qatar on December 16.
Local social networking sites were yesterday abuzz with the talk of the problem in some localities, with people saying they wondered when the municipalities would clear the logged water.
“Many streets still remain submerged under knee-deep water,” wrote one commentator. Even a photograph of a water-logged road street was posted on a site.
The Ministry of Municipality and Urban Planning, meanwhile, said in a release yesterday that in three municipal areas (Umm Salal, Al Wakra and Al Zaya) alone some 2.2 million gallons of water were pumped out by civic tankers in the three days following the rains.
The Ministry said the problem was worse in Umm Salal where several roads and residential areas were submerged. “We pumped out 1.13 million gallons of logged rain water from this town alone,” the ministry said.
A member of the Central Municipal Council (CMC) told this newspaper last evening that those areas where storm water sewers were cleaned up by the civic workers ahead of the rains did not face serious water-logging problems.
“Al Gharrafa was one of them,” said CMC member from this constituency, Mubarak Fraish. In this area, the storm water sewers were cleaned up some three months ago. “So we didn’t have much problem. There was water-logging here and there but those were minor,” said Fraish.
CMC members said an emergency rainwater panel at the civic ministry has already identified low-lying areas that are prone to water-logging, so it must supply the list to Ashghal (the Public Works Authority) to look for a lasting solution. CMC member from Bani Hajar, Mohamed Al Khayarin, said that the civic ministry pumped out water from ‘priority’ areas.
“I think they don’t have so many water pumping devices that they can deploy at all logged sites at a time, so clearing logged areas would take time,” he told this newspaper.
“Our area has newly built infrastructure. In some areas traffic remains affected. We need immediate maintenance of the affected roads in waterlogged localities,” Al Khayarin said.
The Peninsula
