Dubai
A few days ago, I went for an evening walk with my mother in the Al Mankhool area in Dubai, when I came across a disappointing sight. An alley between two buildings was strewn with garbage, plastic bottles and other randomly discarded items (as seen in photograph). It was rather pitiful to see how we treat public places as a dumping ground for waste materials.
It is often seen that people carelessly throw away rubbish, plastic bags, papers, water bottles and cans in common areas of the neighbourhood, despite the fact that dustbins have been provided at every street corner.
Garbage on the roads, pavements or next to overflowing bins is a common sight. It seems that people are too lazy to throw the empty bottles, paper and other garbage in the bins that have been placed at the sides of the road. Sometimes, even broken furniture can be seen blocking the lanes.
Would we throw trash in a similar manner at home? Of course not! We love to keep our homes neat, so we must do our civic duty to keep our neighbourhood clean, too.
The municipal authorities put in a lot of effort in maintaining cleanliness but we also have an important role to play as a community and need to be more careful about disposing trash in a correct manner.
As someone who makes a constant effort to be environmentally friendly, I wanted to express my concern regarding littering so as to make others more conscious of its detrimental impact on our environment. Let us raise our voice in protest whenever we see this malpractice. Further, stricter monitoring needs to be done so that offenders can be caught, severely reprimanded, as well as fined for these callous acts.
A clean and beautiful neighbourhood is what every resident wants. So we all need to be responsible and immensely vigilant so that our city looks neat, clean and tidy at all times.
— The reader is a student based in Dubai.
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FACTBOX
According to a Gulf News report published in March 2016, littering or dumping waste in an area will result in the municipality inspectors imposing a fine of Dh500.
