A couple of years ago we asked ourselves if the idea of a line of 170 km of skyscrapers in the middle of desert was more similar to a paradise, as its promoters described it, or a hell: now that The Line is a construction site open in Saudi Arabia, but the country has commissioned several consultancy companies to carry out a strategic review of the project, to understand if it is still achievable or needed some modification.
This decision derives in part from the fact that The government is obliged to review the expensesgiven the pressure of increasingly lower oil prices and foreign investments lower than expected.
Problems in the company. Even within Neom, the main promoter of The Line, there were several problems: last year Bloomberg claimed that the city’s ability, which initially expected to host 1.5 million inhabitants by 2030, had been reduced to 300,000 people. In the last year, several members of the company have then resigned-by the general manager Nadhmi Al-Nasr, who suddenly left the assignment after six years of work, to the director of communication of the Wayne Borg project, to the director of Urbanism Antoni Vives.
In the end the cut in the available funds and the increase in the necessary budget The construction of the city (which from 500 billion rose to 1,500 billion dollars) forced Neoom to reduce the initially expected length of the 170 km to 105 km skyscraper line, and to delete some key structures such as the desalinization systemwhich alone would have cost between $ 1,500 and 2,000 million dollars and should have satisfied 30% of the city’s water requirement.
Criticism on working conditions. In addition to the financial difficulties, Neom had to face criticisms of employees’ working conditions, forced to very long and hard shifts.
One of the workers interviewed in the documentary of the British channel ITV “Kingdom Uncovered: Inside Saudi Arabia“, who denounced The death of tens of thousands of foreign workers within the various projects of the Saudi plan Vision 2030, said that he was carrying out massacred shifts from 16 hours a day for 14 days Below to build The Line.
Despite all these controversies, Neom pretends to be nothing and continues his utopian narrative of the project: “In large -scale projects and multi -year strategic reviews are common practice and occur several times”, said, according to Bloomberg reports, in an official press release. “The Line remains a strategic priority and Neom undertakes to maintain operational continuity, accelerating progress to align with the general vision and objectives of the project”.
