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Industrial Area - the ‘Wild West’ of Doha

By Sarmad Qazi

Vehicles move at a snail’s pace in Industrial Area thanks to the potholes. Pictures: Shemeer Rasheed
The Industrial Area remains Qatar’s largest dumping ground for materials both industrial and domestic in nature, businesses and visitors say.
They are angry about the poor road conditions, unending potholes, absolute lack of street lighting, the ever-growing mounds of trash and abandoned vehicles.
Here, stray dogs roam the streets at night, making life difficult for the residents. Hooch makers often set up ‘base camp’ here to brew illegal alcohol. Drug dealers peddle illegal substances to low-income labourers and low-level entrepreneurs push pornographic CDs.
Bordered by Doha and Rayyan Municipalities, but claimed by none, the 55-street Industrial Area is Qatar’s first and oldest industrial zone, and is home to hundreds of factories, garages, warehouses, heavy machinery, and labour camps.
Every month the area welcomes the opening of more exchange houses, bank branches, clinics and hospitals, shopping centres, link roads to major highways, gas stations and other facilities, but the anger remains.
“Despite repeated requests to fill potholes, fix street lamps and install signboards worthy of an industrial area, the situation has not changed,” said a hardware trader of 15 years on Street 14.
Often in the news for all the wrong reasons, frequent large-scale fires in factories and abandoned vehicles is another reason the area needs to be redesigned and revamped, the residents say.
“It’s been like this for years now. The Industrial Area feels like the forgotten side of boom-town Doha,” the hardware trader added.
While abandoned vehicles on the city streets continue to pile up, their concentration has reached an alarming proportion in the Industrial Area - from the first road to the dead-ends on Street 55.
Parked for years and gathering dust, the vehicles have given a “Wild West feel” to the area.
Undated stickers by the Doha Municipality have been pasted on some, buried under layers of dust, warning the owners to pick them up within “three days of the notice” or the public cleaning section will be forced to implement the relevant law - Law 8 of 1974, it notes.
“A huge number of discarded and written-off vehicles are placed in various areas of Industrial Area occupying precious parking place. Some of these vehicles have been there since the day I arrived in Doha way back in early eighties,” a businessman said.
Getting to Industrial Area is any “driver’s worst nightmare” after becoming part of the country’s heaviest traffic that moves at a snail’s pace, an engineer said.
“You’ll come across unmarked streets designed in a grid, where you’ll follow a maze, manoeuvring around abandoned vehicles, potholes large enough to accommodate whole cars, and seeping sewage that makes the car stink for days,” he said.
“The most puzzling task is to figure out who to go to for road maintenance, neglected for so long,” he said.
“Road work, when it does start, ends at the digging stage. The dug-up section is never covered immediately.”
Ashghal, the Public Works Authority, maintains that its Operation and Maintenance Department is responsible only for maintenance of streets and roads wider than 24m, while anything smaller is the job of the Ministry of Municipality and Urban Planning.
“The Industrial Area feels like another country. They should stop calling it that,” another regular visitor said.

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