Residents of the Industrial Area are worried lot as heavy rain is expected in Doha and other parts of the country over the weekend.
While welcoming the seasonal rain, the inhabitants expressed concern that many roads in the sprawling neighbourhood might become even more unusable due to the heavy showers.
A number of roads, particularly the internal ones, are in poor shape and things take a turn for the worse every time it rains heavily, residents of the eastern part of the Industrial Area point out.
Waterlogging is common at a number of places and craters also appear on some stretches, making it really hard for them to commute, they add.
There have been cases of stagnant water accumulating in certain areas and not subsiding for days, which, in turn, renders some of the labour camps and other places frequented by low-income workers inaccessible.
The conditions are not much different along several streets on the western side of the Industrial Area, according to some residents.
These places, too, have a number of roads that are in poor shape and vehicles find it hard to ply on them even during normal weather conditions. The situation gets worse during and after showers, they add.
Operators and residents of many labour housing units in the Industrial Area have complained of “inadequate infrastructure and dilapidated roads”, and a number of camps have apparently moved out of the area over the past few years because of this, some of the residents claimed.
“We are keeping our fingers crossed. Let’s hope things don’t turn out to be as bad as they have been during previous spells of heavy rain,” said one of them.
Some residents of other parts of the city, too, said they might choose not to visit the Industrial Area during and immediately after the rainy spell as they feared that the roads would be hard to negotiate.
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