New Jordan Highway

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30955, 11 January 1966, Page 10

New Jordan Highway

Supervision of the building of a road from Amman, the capital of Jordan, to Ma’an, 130 miles away, to connect with a road leading to Jordan’s only port, Aqaba, has been one of the more interesting tasks of a Christchurch civil engineer, Mr D. A. Tucker, during his latest four years overseas. Except for 12 months back in New Zealand, Mr Tucker has been overseas for the last nine years, during which he has been in 36 countries, but now he has come home to work. He still finds New Zealand a pleasant place to be in, with Customs officials and taxi-drivers among the first friendly New Zealanders to greet him. Mr Tucker was working for a firm of consulting engineers ; in Britain when he was chosen to go to Jordan to ! supervise the road, which had been designed by his firm. The contract had been let to a Jordanian contractor, who made considerable use of mechanical equipment but still had to rely on huge gangs of workmen, so that there was a mixture of the mechanical age with that of the pick and shovel. The result, Mr Tucker said, was a first-class highway. An added cost of labour

was the employment of “guards.” As the road and bitumen dumps reached each sheik's territory the contractor had to employ Bedouins from the tribes. They were too weak for road work, and unused to it anyway,. Mr Tucker said, so they became guards, and used to arrive armed to the teeth with revolvers, rifles, knives, and clubs. As many as 30 or 40 had to be employed at a time, and they were paid about £l2 a month each. At Ma’an, the new road joined one built from Aqaba in the days when Jordan was a British mandate .Now it was a run of three hours and a half from Amman to the Red Sea port. As well as being an important economic link, the new road eased the journey to Petra, the ancient stronghold and treasure city of the Nabataeans in south-west Jordan. What used to be a day’s journey from Jerusalem had become a four-hour trip with the new road. Link With Mecca The new desert road was also a link with Mecca, the holy city of Islam, and at the time of the annual pilgrimage to the Hejaz in both years Mr Tucker was in Jordan hundreds of lorries and buses carryig pilgrims used the road. Hatred of Israel remained in Jordan 17 years after Palestine had become Israel, and almost every day the Jordanian English-printed newspaper, the “Jerusalem Times,”

f stirred up the hate, Mr Tucker [ said. The people of Jordan had I come to look favourably on • Nasser, who was once regard- > ed as an enemy, and generally • they regarded him as the leaI der of the Arab world against • the Israelis. • Subsistence was the lot of • many people of Jordan, and - unemployment was rife, Mr I Tucker said. A major problem ) was the refugees from Palesi tine who were still living in I encampments. U.N.R.R.A. was still doing a tremendous I amount of work among them. I Problem in Yorkshire j Back in Britain, Mr Tucker ’ had to deal with a problem not i Uikely to rise in New Zealand I I with its hydro-electric power j—the disposal of ash from two ’ coal-fired power stations in ' Yorkshire. The Yorkshire sta- ’ tions, each of 2000 megawatts, 1 use low-grade pulverised coal ‘ and produce mountains of ash • as fine as cement, and dispo- ’ sal is a problem. ’ The answer has been to pipe 1 it away as sludge, and then dry it on a property of a | square mile. On this the ash ; will be built up into three ! hills rising to 160 feet. It i will then be covered with! ; soil, and the whole area will; • I be landscaped and planted in • trees. ; When Mr Tucker, who grad- . uated from Canterbury Unil versity College in 1952, first ■ left New Zealand in 1957 he , went to Canada. From there . he went to Greenland to work • on a United States Air Force ' base.