When Al-Khayyat & Bin Salama ‘revealed’ what’s in their hearts
the lebanese (while in my presence among them) use the expression “tell what’s in your heart and spark a scandal”. this is what the head of the public authority for roads and land transport, hassan al-khayyat, and his deputy, khaled bin salama did when they submitted their reasoned resignations to the minister of public works and left.
it was found that one of the reasons behind their resignations was the unjustified delay in appointing the general manager of the authority, and his deputies, and the lack of sufficient employees to manage the authority, as their number does not exceed 40 and other reasons.
five years ago, i wrote two articles about the authority and predicted that the authority would fall apart and it would be difficult even for a “superman” to carry out its following tasks:
■ management and supervision of the construction of metro and railway lines.
■ maintenance of road networks.
■ carrying out technical inspection of vehicles.
■ issuing licenses for vehicles and means of transport.
■ installation and maintenance of all traffic lights.
■ provision and management of car and truck parking.
■ supervision driving lessons.
■ truck weighing center management.
■ road laboratories management and so on. how can forty kuwaiti employees perform any of the above tasks, due to the serious decline in the productivity of the kuwaiti employee in general?
it was not surprising, therefore, to announce that the authority had failed after ten years, to achieve anything, not even the maintenance of roads.
the ministry of public works, the general traffic department, kuwait municipality, and transportation still refuse to give it any of its powers, more than 5 years ago, despite the issuance of a decision by the council of ministers to transfer the affiliation of 19 departments and specializations from these authorities to the roads authority, in complete disregard of the cabinet’s decision, and fi ve ministers held the works portfolio, and three prime ministers, without one of them doing anything. is there more administrative incompetence and failure than this?
there has also been confusion going on for years about the intention to cancel the authority, after spending tens of millions on it, with a clear shortage, which continues to this day, in the equipment and devices of the roads quality control and testing center, and its inability to follow up the production of asphalt factories accurately. from all of this, it becomes clear to what extent the government and the national assembly are floundering in their haste to legislate laws and take random decisions without thinking.
how do the authorities approve the establishment of authority and after ten years we discover that it has not accomplished anything and that it is no better than the qur’an printing authority which was incapable of doing anything, clearly a miserable condition, because not even one copy of the qur’an has been printed over ten years, and to add insult to injury it does not even have a printing press.
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any clean and self-respecting competence does not accept to be at the head of a body that does not enjoy respect, and hence the repeated resignations may have come; the first of these was the first president of the authority eng. abdul latif al-dakhil, and then dismissals and resignations followed after him.
