JEDDAH, 11 June 2007 — The Jeddah Municipality is setting up a system for licensing four-wheeled motorbike, horse and camel rentals along the Corniche and is designating areas for these operations to be based, a local official said yesterday.
“Licenses are now being offered to those who meet the requirements,” said Mahmoud Kinsarah, head of the licensing department at the municipality.
The move comes after the municipality recently cracked down on vendors who were renting motorbikes and giving camel and horse rides without any licensing in the absence of regulations regarding where these operations could be set up or not. Now the municipality has banned all such activity on the Corniche and urged entrepreneurs that run such operations to move to less-crowded areas.
Kinsarah made the announcement at a press conference on Saturday at the municipal headquarters on Jeddah’s Al-Amanah Street. He said it was necessary to move the bases of these small businesses off the Corniche in order to reduce crowding.
“The currently available locations (for the businesses) are in Obhur, Dhaban and off Madinah Road, where there are a lot of empty space,” he said.
Kinsarah said that the recently launched campaign to rid the Corniche of horse riding, camel riding, carriage rides and quad-bike rentals has been a success.
The only legal horse riding in the area occurs at the private equestrian club that takes up a considerable portion of the Corniche and is not easily accessible.
The municipality confiscated 13 quad-bikes and 25 horses and camels over the past month.
Kinsarah noted that raids are organized to cover most of the times when the beach is crowded. Extra raids were scheduled after midnight because some horse and bike owners started targeting visitors around that time thinking that it would be safe for them, Kinsarah said.
He said that police and passport officials are manning every exit point to the beach in order to make sure that no animals or bikes enter the area.
