Around 3 million pilgrims perform Haj every year and when they leave, the streets of the tent city of Mina, Arafat and Makkah are awash with litter.

The Makkah municipality is responsible for the upkeep and cleanup of the holy sites. The cleanup operation in Arafat and Muzdalifah begins immediately after the pilgrims’ departure from there, said Makkah Mayor Osama Al-Bar.

He said the municipality starts disposing of garbage in the holy sites the moment pilgrims leave Mina.

Thousands of workers have been deployed by the municipality to clean these sites. Al-Bar said the holy sites have been divided into 25 service units, which include Mina, Muzdalifah and Arafat, for better coordination and to make the cleanup quicker.

He said 20,500 cleaners have been engaged to work around-the-clock with hundreds of garbage trucks. The municipality also has in place mobile ground storage tanks and compressor garbage storage tanks to prevent the accumulation of filth. A team of 100 workers with a fleet of 10 garbage trucks is on standby around-the-clock to meet any emergency situation, Al-Bar said.

In Makkah alone, around 7,000 workers have been cleaning the city since Oct. 27. Around 670 garbage trucks and other machines for cleaning roads have been deployed.

The municipality started disposing of garbage in the holy sites the moment pilgrims left Mina.

Abdul Qadeer Sayeed, a municipal worker, said that it is quite natural that garbage will pile up wherever a huge mass of people stays. Pilgrims who come through authorized means are not responsible for the garbage, he added.

"Those who come illegally with no places reserved in equipped camps squat on pavements, under bridges and on rocky terraces," he said.

"These pilgrims, many of them with young children, ate and drank in the same place as litter grew around them.”

Meanwhile, men in yellow overalls toiled nonstop, pushing overflowing orange bins, sweeping the streets and loading large garbage containers onto lorries.

The garbage is collected at 131 temporary dumps within Mina, as moving it outside is impossible because of the crowds.

Al-Bar said the garbage was being moved to the various dumping grounds with the help of 900 mechanized garbage boxes from all public utilities and markets around the clock. This year the municipality has also installed electrically operated compressor garbage storage tanks to contain bad smells.