On a visit to Makkah last month, when I passed through a crowded street where the air was polluted with emissions from all the cars, I noticed how environmentally unfriendly our streets are. As we drove to the Holy Mosque, the air was thick and unbearable — so much so that the traffic police were wearing masks even as unfortunate pedestrians and others inhaled all the poisons being emitted. How much of what we were breathing, I wondered, was oxygen?
The same week I read a local newspaper about an environment award offered by SABIC. According to the article, “The award is an attempt to reward those who make valuable contributions to the protection of the environment.” Good news in that it reflects a welcome effort to protect our environment! It also suggests that what we need is a real awareness of what we are doing to our environment.
What is our idea of ‘environment’? How do we protect it for the sake of us and our children? People simply need to understand there are rules and they would be punished if the rules are violated. In our daily lives we do — and see others do — simple things that never enter our minds are harmful to the environment. We go on picnics by the sea and with blithe unconcern, leave all our trash where we sat and ate. Some people even go to the trouble of gathering all the trash together and throwing it into the sea. How many times have you seen anyone using the rubbish bins provided?
On my way to work, I pass an empty plot and recently I noticed a sign: “Don’t dump rubbish.” The sign makes no difference at all; the plot is already awash with rubbish. In Jeddah any unused land soon becomes a dumping ground and, sign or no sign, it remains a dumping ground until someone builds on it.
This dumping does not happen only on empty land; people dump trash everywhere. Down goes the window of an expensive car and an elegantly—manicured hand drops rubbish onto the street. The most stomach-turning scene of all, however, is a driver who opens his door and spits on the street. He then drives calmly on. The spitting contest is open for all, pedestrians and drivers alike. No matter what standards of cleanliness people are familiar with, none seem to apply to the street which is — obviously a place for getting rid of trash and rubbish.
But is this all a citizen’s responsibility? There are laws of course that prohibit such behavior but the omnipresent Saudi question remains: What about implementing those laws? An award might work with some people but for the majority who care nothing about a clean environment, an award is pointless.
Besides, they don’t even understand what it is all about. What are officials doing about the problem? The fact is that very little is done to prevent these acts or to punish those who commit them.
During our all-too-short rainy season, pools and lakes remain after the rain and if they happen to be in backstreets or the less fashionable areas of town, they are left. Nobody bothers with them and those who live nearby simply have to cope.
These unwanted bodies of water soon become filthy and provide breeding grounds for mosquitoes and other insects — to say nothing of the stench after a few A recent newspaper article dealt with a village outside Jeddah where the residents alleged that the garbage on their streets had not been removed since Ramadan.
They complained of the sickening smells; they said they had complained to the municipality but to no avail. One person interviewed said that the municipality paid poor salaries to garbage collectors and consequently, nobody wanted the job. No matter what the excuses, the facts are that there is an emergency in that village and in all other areas suffering from similar problems. In every area, the problems should be solved by the local municipality. There are of course municipalities which do try to deal with the problem but sometimes their efforts are for naught.
Often we see garbage-collecting trucks which are open in the back with garbage flying off into the air and the street. Surely if the municipality is going to the trouble to collect garbage, it should make sure that the very act of collecting it does not make the problem worse or become a problem itself.
A recent picture in Arab News showed a chair dumped on the bottom of the sea; another showed a shopping trolley on what used to be a coral reef. The pictures accompanied an article about a seminar on pollution in the Red Sea. Those photos said much about how little is done to protect our natural resources. The Red Sea is rich in coral and could be a major tourist attraction, generating millions of dollars. It has unfortunately become a receptacle for any piece of trash or any kind of waste we want to get rid of with no thought for the consequences of what we throw away upon the marine life.
And now at last, we come to one of the most publicized problems in Saudi Arabia. Sewage disposal in Jeddah — or, more accurately, the lack of it. Sometimes the sewage goes straight into the unfortunate Red Sea; sometimes it is collected by trucks and ends up in the famous lake of sewage in Briman, just east of Jeddah. This lake is our worst nightmare; we have read over and over of how dangerous it is to the environment and how, if it should overflow, Jeddah would sink in substances too awful to write about or think of, let alone to smell or imagine.
To hear that officials are doing anything to get rid of the lake is reassuring, but the relief goes away as soon as the officials forget about it and the danger not only persists but increases. Jeddah’s mayor has said that there will be no more dumping of sewage into the lake or the Red Sea and that all sewage will go to treatment plants.
Please, Mister Mayor, this time let the promises become reality. Too often in the past, the words of other officials have never led to action and have remained just so much extra, unneeded verbal pollution.
