This is in response to the story “Jeddah to deploy 50,000 new dumpsters.” Amid all the startling news of billion dollar projects cut out for the Jeddah skyline — the flyovers, underpasses, new housing plans — the headline of 50,000 dumpsters to be placed in the Jeddah districts seems to be the most practical and certainly the need of the hour.
One has only to go into any of the congested districts of the Bride of the Sea to see what this jewel of a city has come to: the Sharifiya, Aziziya and Safa districts are flooded with sewage contaminated water while the stench from piles of garbage is so overpowering it could stun a bull. Some years ago, Roger Harrison had written a thought-provoking report “Jeddah is floating on a bed of sewage.” Have his worst fears come true?
While I am truly thankful to the legions of Bangladeshi sweepers and cleaners as well as those riding the back of those garbage trucks who try to keep the city clean, I wonder why most of them are at the traffic lights instead of in Aziziya, for example?
Granted that there are myriads of problems regarding issues of payments, fraudulent visas, etc., but now that they are here, they ought to do what they came for.
Many dumpsters are brimming over with garbage, and when the trucks come around, our brothers tend to begin sorting the garbage right there, thus spreading the filth all around. Some even look for (God only knows what) inside tied-up rubbish bags and when they leave, rotting vegetables, fruits, pampers are strewn about in a muck of oozing filth. And then, the bin ladies don’t help either.
Their children, armed with sticks, jump into the dumpsters and throw out anything they find of use and other stuff as well. Now with all due sympathies to both the cleaners and the bin ladies, surely they can pick up after themselves.
It seems that just like the beggars on the roads of Jeddah who have devised a very efficient system of mapping out the city and deciding to send an army of beggars first to one traffic light and then to another, the cleaners have also taken the cue and are now doing the same.
And it’s not just the traffic lights that have been mapped but also the dumpsters, although this is on speculation.
Keeping Jeddah clean is no mean task. So, hopefully, with the addition of more and larger dumpsters, the city can look forward to fresher air. — Ozma Siddiqui, Jeddah
New dumpsters in Jeddah
