Swimming in the Street
Finally, The Greater Amman Municipality has decided to do something about the flooding in Amman’s streets after any amount of rain no matter how insignificant.
I had posted about this last year and I was thinking of posting about it again recently, because the situation in Amman in the winter is despicable. The streets are always flooded, the drainage holes are spitting water instead of taking it in, and driving is really dangerous especially because you can’t see the many bumps and holes in the streets under the water.
خصصت أمانة عمان الكبرى ضمن موازنتها للعام الØالي 9 مليون Ùˆ600 أل٠دينار لغايات إنشاء خطوط تصري٠مياه الأمطار والعبارات الصندوقية ÙÙŠ العاصمة.
This is taken from last year’s Waterland Amman: City-Sized Pool post. I feel exactly the same way still:
Every winter the same problem arises — it gets talked about on morning radio shows, evening news, and 60 minutes, those in positions of responsibility are brought to comment and they say next to nothing in citizen-O-meter, and then after the usual citizen rants nothing is done to remedy the situation on the ground. Nobody is charged with anything (ruining people’s cars, for instance) and nobody cares.
How very, utterly, desperately pathetic this situation is! I refuse to get my pants soaking wet up to my knees when I decide to cross the street, I refuse to get water up to my brain when I dive in a street pool, and I refuse to cramp someone’s style by spraying them with dirty wheel water when I pass them by. Moreover, I refuse to sheep-up about this.
Amman Municipality and everyone working in it — FIX OUR STREETS or by the devil, this time, someone will get hurt.
It’s the same thing here. Every year, the same neighborhoods and apartments get flooded when it rains, and every year, the municipality makes a big show of helping the victims. Instead of coming up with permanent solutions, though, they just keep putting on bandaid after bandaid, and then everyone looks up in surprise the next time these same people are flooded out of their homes.<br /><br />Don’t even get me started on the drainage (or lack thereof) in the area where I work. Yesterday, I actually had to backtrack in order to find a spot where I could cross the street and continue my walk, because the waters on that side of the street were too high to pass. Ridiculous!<br />