Do we say ‘the house is unclean’ or ‘the owners of the house are unclean’?
The fact is all garbage that fills our streets, our gardens and accumulates around the garbage bins next to our homes and our business centers is sickening, but it did not show up out of nowhere. We are the ones who throw it from our car windows, or we left behind in parks, or pile it up in and around the garbage bins until the cleaners come to collect what they can. It’s strange that we always complain and say: “Jeddah is not clean,” and “the municipality and its workers are negligent.”
Yes, it is indisputable that the municipality is disorganized in this matter, but we the population of Jeddah are also failing our duty; we — or a large segment of us — are polluting Jeddah with our wrong practices. In order for Jeddah to become completely clean, the municipality would need an army of cleaners; marching behind each and every one of us to collect waste that we carelessly throw.
As for those who say: “Jeddah is clean,” I ask: When you visit someone’s home, and you find that the house is unclean and there is garbage everywhere, do you think “The house is dirty” or “their domestic worker is dirty and negligent,” or do you think that the owners of the house are themselves unclean? Surely you would say think the latter. So, as the cleanliness of our homes is a reflection of us, then surely the cleanliness of our city reflects upon us also.
I had recently returned from the US city of Seattle, which the degree of its cleanliness amazed me, although interestingly, I have not seen one cleaner on the streets, or beggars beside their traffic signals the whole time I was there.
Some may attribute this phenomena to their stringent laws, which severely punish throwing waste into the street, where the — for example — the fine for throwing a cigarette out of the car the equivalent of SR 3,850, and some of those fines go up to astronomical numbers in the event it caused harm to anyone. This is true, but the issue is more than just a few strict laws; it is also a matter of awareness in the home and the quality of education in schools, and a culture of cleanliness in society in general.
We bear the primary responsibility for the cleanliness of our city, and this does not diminish, of course, the responsibility of the municipality, not only in clean up operations, but also to educate the people and seek to enact deterrent laws against anyone who leaves waste in the streets and parks, in addition to making shops, commercial centers and residential buildings take responsibility for the hygiene of the areas surrounding them, and follow it strictly.
Recently I had read on a Facebook page of a colleague, an interesting observation, in which he says: “The house bell rang one day, I asked my son to open the door, and when he returned I asked him who it was, and he answered saying: It’s the garbage man.” But I corrected him by saying: “He is not the garbage man, he is a cleaner and you are the one producing the garbage!”
— Courtesy of Al-Madinah newspaper
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Twitter: @skateb
