AL-AHSA: A number of farmers in Al-Ahsa are complaining about the large amounts of waste that fill the roads and empty lands, and called for speedy solutions to get rid of this problem that causes illness and environmental pollution. They pointed out that polluting agricultural lands changes their natural, chemical and biological characteristics and affects people, animals and plants.

Ali Al-Hassan said pollution and disposing of agricultural and civil waste on the roads affects agricultural lands in addition to transmitting diseases to human beings, such as worms, liver diseases, kidney and intestine problems. Maintaining the land from pollution is very important because it is directly connected to human health.

Mohammad Al-Ghanim said: “Some agricultural roads are filled with agricultural waste and we call on relevant authorities to find speedy solutions to dispose of them, because they emit bad smells and affect the land negatively.”

The official spokesman of the irrigation and sewage authority in Al-Ahsa, Abdullah Al-Thafar, said the authority cooperates with Al-Ahsa municipality to remove waste since some areas have large amounts of waste. “A while ago a project was set up to provide agricultural waste containers and to open a factory for this waste to be reused, but the idea was not implemented because of difficulties in separating various agricultural wastes.”

Al-Thafar said the authority’s contract with contractor to remove full containers with agricultural content, not civil waste contents, led to the failure of the project because many citizens didn’t abide by the rules and mixed both wastes, and some farmers threw their waste in the roads despite the fact that containers were very close to them.