Jeddah residents, accustomed to watching their roads and streets being dug up and destructed for over two decades, all with public sector officials promising a state-of-the art water and sewage drainage system have come in for a nasty shock.
Rains that could be aptly described as brief showers in most parts of the world have tragically claimed the lives of 77 people, according to latest reports. Many more have been injured or displaced in a place that not long ago was touted as “an important city on the economic map and playing a significant role in achieving sustained progress for the Kingdom.”
The mayor himself at the time stated: “The city plans to attract more people for education, tourism, work, residence and entertainment in an atmosphere of exuberance and security. It remains the focal point for pilgrims and visitors to Islam’s two most sacred mosques. Jeddah has a diversified economic base and deep-rooted trade traditions that will make it a unique international trade and tourist center. The city is determined to achieve and maintain its sustainable development.”
And yet it took a small portion of a day when the waters came to expose how shallow and baseless such statements indeed are. Try explaining that to the families of the victims who were caught in a life-and-death situation, with so many succumbing in their fight for survival.
Do we expect someone or anyone from the public sector to come forward and accept responsibility for this tragedy? Or will it simply be written of as “an act of God.” I wonder. No doubt, over the next few days accountability will be shuffled back and forth between the various departments involved in the transformation of this city into a bigger mess than it was.
Families of the victims would want to know why. And residents of this city will wonder if all that digging and uprooting of the roads and streets in their neighborhoods to lay massive pipes was purely for cosmetic purposes. Even as I write this, two days after the showers, large pools of stagnant rainwater remain undrained in most neighborhoods.
This raises fears of another worrisome prospect: Dengue fever! As more time passes before these waters evaporate or are manually pumped out through water tankers, mosquitoes will be busy laying their eggs (remember that it takes only about a week for the larvae to mature to adulthood) adding to the population’s woes. Not only will we have swine flu then to contend with, but dengue fever will undoubtedly share some of the headlines.
So what should be done to avert a similar tragedy in the future? Relying on nature’s inclination of passing Jeddah by in most rainy seasons is not the answer. Blaming such a tragedy on unseen forces would be a pathetic way to address the issue.
An immediate investigation must be launched into why such a disaster was allowed to happen in the wake of massive works that had already gone into the project of the city’s drainage and sewage systems for over two decades. Billions of riyals have been spent over all these years, and I would suppose there are billions more in the pipeline, and yet fail us when it is crunch time.
Public sector officials, past and present, entrusted with the responsibility of ensuring workable water and sewage systems for the city must be questioned over their role or responsibility for this massive failure in the city’s infrastructure. Accountability must be addressed to and punishments must be meted out to those guilty of negligence toward their responsibilities in this matter.
That is the least that the residents of this city would find acceptable. The next step would be to expedite the implementation of a workable drainage system, the present one obviously having failed us.
At a time when the daily newspapers and TV channels are full of reports of scores of people being killed or dying elsewhere, 77 victims of a rainfall may not grab that much attention. But try telling that to one of the victims’ families.
