Two detained after ‘substandard concrete’ found in Kirkuk village road project

KIRKUK — Iraq’s Federal Integrity Commission has detained two engineers and uncovered alleged violations in a road paving project covering 11 villages in Kirkuk governorate, saying contractors reduced concrete layer thickness and skipped required steel reinforcement in a project worth more than 4 billion Iraqi dinars ($2.77 million).

A team from the commission’s Kirkuk Investigation Office inspected the governorate’s Municipalities Directorate and detained the head of the resident engineer’s department and a colleague following an audit and investigation. The commission said the two failed to ensure compliance with technical specifications, specifically by allowing contractors to reduce concrete layer thickness and omit BRC reinforcement steel required under approved designs.

The project was funded through the Reconstruction Fund for Areas Affected by Terrorist Operations and awarded to a general contracting company for 4,239,900,000 dinars. The commission said the case is being investigated under Article 340 of Iraq’s Penal Code.

The Kirkuk Integrity Investigation Court ordered both suspects detained pending further investigation and recorded statements from legal representatives of the Kirkuk governorate administration, the Roads and Bridges Directorate and the Municipalities Directorate. The court also ordered a technical committee drawn from North Oil Co., the Engineers Syndicate and the Kirkuk branch of the Construction Laboratories Authority to assess the completed work against contractual requirements, and requested clarification on discrepancies between two laboratory reports.