Amman municipality continues to deal with Huda aftermath

AMMAN — The Greater Amman Municipality (GAM) is handling the aftermath of the blizzard and doing maintenance work on the capital’s streets, a GAM official said on Tuesday.

“GAM is currently handling two major issues that people will notice after the snow fully melts: the city’s cleanliness and the piles of dirty snow at intersections and entries to bridges,” Basem Tarawneh, deputy director for districts and environment affairs at GAM, told The Jordan Times.

Tarawneh said over 85 per cent of the city’s garbage has already been collected, except in the Jbeiha and Sweileh neighbourhoods, which witnessed heavy snowfall, adding that they will be garbage-free by the end of Tuesday’s working day.

He noted the GAM is working “actively” to remove the piles of snow on the streets, as they turn into ice when they melt.

“We collect the snow piles and move them to empty plots of land in the evening when traffic is light so we can complete the task as fast as possible,” he said in a phone interview, noting that GAM cadres have to operate within “the very limited period before the roads become icy”.

Commending the  “excellent” cooperation with the concerned authorities as well as private firms, Tarawneh said they were “cooperative and punctual” in giving GAM a hand in clearing the roads with their loaders and armoured vehicles. 

Residents’ commitment to curfews gives the municipality’s vehicles “freedom of movement”, he added.

Furthermore, GAM is working on removing snow accumulated on side roads after local residents moved piles near their cars and homes to the middle of the road, causing partial blockage.

“We urge residents of side roads to report these incidents to GAM and remove their cars so we can clear the streets properly,” Tarawneh said.

Work is also under way to remove broken branches of trees, according to the GAM official, who added that the majority of broken branches will be removed by Tuesday.

Another issue that often emerges after blizzards is damage to the capital’s streets, which GAM is also working on.

“In these weather conditions we use cold mixes instead of the usual hot ones to pave the streets,” he explained.

Tarawneh, who has been working in this field for 27 years, said the municipality’s handling of the storm, dubbed Huda, is the best he has witnessed over this period.

He attributed the “positive” results to a number of factors.

GAM vehicles were distributed to four assembly points, from which they were dispatched to clear the roads, compared to a single assembly point during Alexa, a major snowstorm that hit the Kingdom in late 2013, bringing public life to a standstill for several days.

“GAM administration also provided local directors with the funds required to rent private loaders and snow-clearing vehicles prior to the storm,” Tarawneh said, adding that the government’s decision to announce public holidays and delay work hours also enabled more progress in clearing the streets.

GAM employees used over 135 municipality and rented vehicles to clear the roads until Saturday, while another 87 vehicles from private firms were deployed after Saturday, according to Tarawneh, who noted that GAM sprinkled some 700 tonnes of salt to melt snow on the capital’s roads.

The municipality’s vehicles worked for 3,000 continuous hours to clear roads during the blizzard, according to a GAM statement e-mailed to The Jordan Times on Monday evening.

GAM’s environment department collected some 7,250 tonnes of garbage between last Wednesday and Sunday evening, while trash collection vehicles transported around 1,450 tonnes to the Ghabawi Landfill, the statement said.