Kuwait’s Partnership Technical Bureau (PTB) has delayed the request for proposals for the Umm al-Hayman Wastewater project until new regulations are confirmed. It is now expected to be issued in February 2015.

The work involves design, financing, building, operation and maintenance of a new Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP) with an initial treatment capacity of 500,000 cubic metres a day, which can be expanded to 700,000cm/d. It also includes upgrading and extension of the Egaila pumping station, refurbishment of Umm al-Hayman City pumping station, construction of Sabah al-Ahmed pumping station, sewer transmission lines and TSE transfer and distribution systems.

Six consortiums were prequalified for the project in 2012.

The project, which will reduce raw sewage discharge in Southern Kuwait, was originally announced in 2009, to be tendered in 2012, and completed in 2015.

The PTB confirmed that the main contract could not be tendered until the executive regulations for Kuwait’s new foreign investment law are released by the technical committee. The 2013 law was intended to reduce bureaucratic delays at the Kuwait Foreign Investment Board, now the Kuwait Direct Investment Promotion Authority, and attract foreign investment.