JEDDAH, 18 January 2007 — Residents of Jeddah are becoming increasingly alarmed and angry at the piles of construction waste material that are being dumped illegally into empty lots in their neighborhoods.
Their frustration has grown over the several past years as complaints to Jeddah Municipality have fallen upon deaf ears, and the dumpers of this trash are now well aware of this and taking advantage of the municipality’s lack of action.
Arab News recently toured the city’s districts as part of an informal tour to see how many undeveloped lots have been turned into clandestine trash dumps. In every district we toured, an illegal trash dump was always easy to find. At 1 p.m. recently we confronted the driver of a bulldozer who was in the process of unloading construction rubbish from a dump truck into an empty lot in the middle of a residential neighborhood.
“I was told by my sponsor to dump here and that’s what I am going to do,” said the driver, who refused to give us his name before proceeding to tip over a load of trash onto an undeveloped residential lot that already contained several piles of garbage from an adjoining construction site.
The driver seemed unconcerned about the crowd of neighborhood onlookers that had gathered around as Arab News interviewed him. He even smiled and posed for a picture. He told us that his sponsor who told him to dump trash on this lot, was Hassan Al-Refiyh, a developer. Arab News confronted Al-Refiyh about what his truck driver had said. He openly admitted to telling his driver to dump the trash from his construction site onto the adjoining 90X90 square meter undeveloped residential lot.
“Do whatever you like,” he said. “Even the city doesn’t care enough about Jeddah and I am certain nothing will come of your investigation.”
This attitude, expressed openly and with impunity, is part of the reason why the public eyesores and safety hazards have cropped up in nearly any district of the city you visit. Jeddah’s rapid growth, coupled with a construction boom and a lack of enforcement of the law regarding illegal dumping, has resulted in a city pock marked with mounds of trash. Many residents are fed up and fighting mad.
“I have been living here since I was a child and as the city population grows more apartment buildings and villas are being built and with it comes construction waste that is dumped in anywhere thought convenient,” said Ahmed Al-Zahrani. “Where’s the city municipality and why hasn’t anything been done to at least clean up what has been dumped even if they can’t catch who’s doing it?” he asked.
City officials announced that they had cleared 75,000 cubic meters of construction waste and delivered it to the new landfill about 40 kilometers east of Madinah Ring Road.
A drive around Jeddah will tell you that they have a long way to go — not just in cleaning up existing site, but also in responding to citizens’ complaints.
Arab News attempted to report Al-Refiyh to the city via 940, the hotline number for municipal complaints. Numerous attempts to call were met with a recorded message that said the network was busy. Calls to the regular number of the municipality were unanswered. Visiting in person was also fruitless. The receptionist asked this reporter to wait. Arab News attempted to find out when the person in charge would return, to no avail.
“You can wait one, two, three hours,” the receptionist offered politely.
Arab News returned to the lot five days after the conversation with Al-Refiyh. A bulldozer was in the process of burying the garbage in the lot. The workers were also using the leftover sand from their construction project to cover up the trash they left on the adjoining lot. Arab News went back to talk to Al-Refiyh about this cover-up. He said it’s common for developers to run into trash dumped illegally from other projects.
“When I started building I too found garbage and waste and it was worse than this,” he said. “So what if I leave some too? That’s the way things are in Jeddah and everyone deals with it.”
Arab News witnessed workers cleaning up the trash from the lot the morning after this second conversation with Al-Refiyh. This time the Pakistani driver was demonstrating his skill with a bulldozer by hauling away garbage he had dumped and buried under previous orders from his sponsor. Where the trash was going this time he would not say.
The experience begs the questions: Would the trash still be there had a reporter not confronted the developer? What if a resident, rather than a journalist, tried to follow the rules to report incidents like this to municipal officials? Do the deaf ears of officials create apathy among citizens? Do residents feel that there is nothing they can do when a real-estate developer dumps garbage next door? These are just a few questions for city officials and residents to consider.
