I am an American from the city of Houston and currently visiting the holy city of Makkah. While visiting the Holy Haram, I have noticed that the administration has initiated giving out polyethylene bags to visitors for placing their shoes in. I believe this initiative is ill advised and has been implemented poorly with one serious, and likely offending, mistake. Let me make four significant observations to make my point.
First, an initiative that promulgates large-scale use of non-biodegradable polyethylene bags runs counter to the Kingdom’s announced policy to strive to make the country more environmentally friendly. Here we have an initiative that will, at minimum, use 20 million bags a year (if only 10 percent of, say, 100,000 visitors use the bags five times every day). These bags are thrown immediately upon use.
Second, for visitors from all over to see the leading oil producer’s government doling out polyethylene bags made in China in the Haram makes no sense to me.
Third, these bags do not have the texture of ordinary shopping bags. They are very smooth and are so slippery that they pose risks of visitors slipping on them since one finds some of these lying sometimes on the floor and the steps of the Haram.
Fourth, the administration has not bothered to edit what is written on the bag. One of the notations on the bag suggests proper disposal by asking to keep the country clean.
Here is what it says: “Keep the holly country clean.”
The respected editor of this English newspaper, Arab News, will appreciate the fact that associating Saudi Arabia as “holly Country,” with all that the word holly may connote, certainly is not a benign connotation. Why risk being made the butt of jokes if the remedy is fairly straightforward? — Yousuf Habib, Houston, Texas, US
