The money exists. The paperwork is filed. The street is finished. More than 40 families in Hadab Hawara still have no water connection, and the reason is that the street was finished first.
اضافة اعلان
The area lies on agricultural land outside the city limits in Madaba Governorate, near the Islamic cemetery. The Ministry of Public Works and Housing paved the road there recently. Miyahuna, the water company, cannot now lay pipes beneath it, because ministry regulations bar excavation on newly paved roads for at least five years. The water network project has stopped, with its funding intact and unspent.
Residents applied years before the paving
The residents' central complaint is one of sequence. Their applications for a water network predate the paving by years, filed with Miyahuna and documented, and none of that fed into the decision to pave.
Issa Abdullah Al-Salman described a settlement where the electricity arrived and the water did not. Meters are installed in licensed homes, he noted, while residents who completed every required procedure still depend on tankers, which he called a heavy burden.
Sami Salem Abu Raqiq welcomed the JD60,000 that the Governorate Council allocated for the project, then described what followed. The allocation gave residents hope, according to Abu Raqiq, but the obstacles to installing the network left that hope unfulfilled. What matters more than money on paper, he argued, is officials treating the ground-level obstacles seriously.
Nayef Awda Salem Al-Zawaida put the coordination failure plainly. Paving a street should not become the reason citizens cannot get water, in his account, and simple coordination between the Public Works Directorate and the water company before the contractor started would have spared both the state and the residents the problem.
Hussein Al-Nawasreh made the case on cost and on principle. Water is not a supplementary service that can wait five years, according to Al-Nawasreh, and households without a network connection pay many times the government tariff to private tanker operators, with quality and availability both deteriorating through the dry summer months.He called for a solution that delivers the network without damaging the new road, noting that the engineering methods for this already exist.
Saadi Muhammad Al-Gharaghir framed the request as a basic right tied to daily life and children's health. The applications are official and registered with Miyahuna and the funding is in place, according to Al-Gharaghir, and what is missing is a decision and an implementation mechanism, before the allocation is redirected or lost.
Both agencies confirm the deadlock
Engineer Abdul Salam Al-Kalbani, director of public works in Madaba Governorate, confirmed that ministry instructions prohibit permits for excavation on newly paved streets for a minimum of five years.
The rule protects the technical integrity of the road, safeguards the public money spent on it, and keeps the street within the contractor's warranty period, according to Al-Kalbani. The road in Hadab Hawara has not yet been formally handed over and remains under that warranty.
Engineer Mufid Al-Lawzi, director of Miyahuna in Madaba, explained that the JD60,000 allocation from the Governorate Council budget coincided with the paving work. Miyahuna has approached the Madaba Public Works Directorate and the ministry repeatedly seeking an exception or approval that would let it issue the network tender, according to Al-Lawzi, and the company continues to pursue an implementation mechanism and legal agreement that delivers water without damaging the road or breaching the regulations.
Three ways out
Technical specialists consulted by Al-Ghad identified alternatives that would satisfy both agencies.
Horizontal directional drilling would run pipes beneath the asphalt layer without cutting into it, leaving road quality and the contractor's warranty intact. A second option uses the road's right of way and the unpaved ground beside it to carry the main line. A third requires no new technology at all, only a memorandum of understanding between the ministry, Miyahuna and the contractor, under which any excavation is restored to the highest technical specification at the water project's expense.
Each of these was available before the paving began.
Source: Al-Ghad. Reporting by Ahmed Al-Shawabkeh.
