JEDDAH, 8 September 2003 — There has been a dramatic improvement in the lives of inhabitants in the Kilo 14 area of Umm Al-Salam in east Jeddah. Streets that only a month ago continuously ran with sewage are now dry, the air is cleaner and the stench that pervaded every aspect of life is gone.
“It’s not perfect, but it’s much better,” Ahmed Ali, long-time resident, said. “Tankers come many times a day now and pump out the waste. It’s improved our lives a lot.”
The improvement stems directly from the efforts of the head of the local municipality of Umm Al-Salam, Khaled Al-Ammri, who responded to the publication of the problem a month ago.
“I knew of the problem, and when we saw how bad it had got, we just had to do the best we could immediately.”
Abdullah Mohammed, who runs a local general store, had seen his trade seriously affected. “The road is often like a river. People won’t walk through that,” he said a month ago.
Now he is much happier. “The business is back to normal,” he said. “The regular trucks make a big difference. They started coming soon after you took the photos and have come every day since then.”
Overnight, when the steady stream of trucks stops, there is still a trickle of overflow. The underground problem, the lack of a mains sewage system, still remains, as does the source of the sewage.
“There are many houses connected to the pipe that brings the sewage into our street,” said Ahmed Ali.
“They have to put it somewhere — so the municipality should do the work and fix the problem.”
“I know the local municipality is doing what it can and it’s better. Why don’t they just cut out the bureaucracy and stop the residents on the hill connecting to the pipes and get rid of their waste properly?” said Faisal Mohammed, a younger resident of the area.
Khaled Al-Ammari told Arab News yesterday that the local municipality responded to the problem by authorizing an increase in sewage collections.
“It’s the best we can do,” he said, “It’s only a temporary solution and our resources are stretched. There has been a contract in place to lay sewage mains in the area now for three years. After the first year, construction stopped. We don’t have the authority to start it on our own; this is a Ministry of Water responsibility and they have to address it.”
“As to the home-owners making illegal connections and allowing the sewage to flood away from their homes and out of their lives,” he said, “we are tied up in bureaucracy. We have threatened to cut their services — but cannot legally do it without central authorization.”
The problem he faces is one of enforcing orders to stop this happening, he said. “The municipality is obliged to follow procedure, and this takes a long time.”
The ministry official who is responsible for the project was not available for comment as, Arab News was told, “he is still on vacation.”
