JEDDAH, 13 March 2005 — About 20 UK companies have joined to hold a one-day consultative environmental and water seminar in Jeddah on Tuesday. The group includes the prestigious Lloyds Register — a world leader in the provision of technical certification and advisory services to industry — and leaders in water management and conservation of the environment.
The visiting companies manufacture and facilitate sophisticated water production, purification, recycling and disposal systems and the supporting industrial processes which meet increasingly tough environmental legislation standards in Europe and the US.
The event, hosted by the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry, will be opened by the British Consul General Carma Elliot and attended by Ambassador Sherard Cowper-Coles and invited guests who are involved in the water industry in Saudi Arabia. Dr. Ahmed Ashour, deputy assistant for environmental affairs at the Presidency of Meteorology & Environment, representing Prince Turki ibn Nasser, is scheduled to open the networking event that follows immediately after the completion of the formal session.
The visiting group of engineers and businessmen arrived in Riyadh yesterday evening and were to hold a seminar there today. Tomorrow, the group will host a follow-up day, meeting with businessmen and urban planners.
The group, as part of the Environmental and Water Group within the Middle East Association, arrive after the UK Trade Mission established that environmental concerns are moving higher up the national agenda.
“Concern for the environment is something of a hot potato right now,” said Omar Saeed of the trade section at the UK Consulate in Jeddah. “The UK is a world leader in many of the technologies at the cutting edge of water and environmental management.”
Following the Jeddah seminar and meetings with the new Mayor of Jeddah Adel Fakeeh and Deputy Minister for Water and Electricity for the Western Region Dr. Khaled Badri, the group will spend a day in Yanbu visiting the oil, petrochemical and water installations; they will also meet the director of the Royal Commission for Yanbu.
With the rapid expansion of urban living in the Kingdom — Jeddah has a seven percent plus growth rate per annum — has come tremendous pressure on existing water and waste systems. Although the new mains sewerage is being laid in major cities, there is still an urgent need for more waste treatment plants and disposal systems. New mains construction in Jeddah have been under way for some time, partly because of the urban expansion and partly because the unique underlying geology of the city mitigates against the continued disposal of untreated or partially-treated waste in desert dumps.
