KUWAIT: Kuwait Municipality is not effectively protecting the country’s coastal environment, the State Audit Bureau has found in a recent report. The report cites the municipality’s inability to produce a credible working plan to monitor the cleanliness of beaches across the country and its failure to play its role in limiting littering.

The bureau released its findings after examining Kuwait Municipality’s work over the years 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 in relation to waste management in coastal areas. The municipality was not transparent about all its activities — It didn’t provide the bureau with all the documents it requested, including annual cleaning plans and statistics on the complaints about beach cleanliness and measures taken to address them.

The waste problem has plagued Kuwait’s beaches for years, with the municipality continuously launching public awareness campaigns calling on people to stop littering. Numerous volunteer groups have organized beach cleaning initiatives over the years. But relying on a patch work of remedial and reactionary measures hasn’t proven effective in addressing the issue, as environmental activists’ calls to protect Kuwait’s beaches have only increased.

According to statistics published in the bureau’s report, Kuwait Municipality has reported the collection of 705 tons of waste from Kuwait’s coasts over the period from 2019 to 2022. The amount of waste collected in 2022 was the highest at 213 tons. The largest amount of waste collected in 2022 was in Hawally, with the Sha’ab waterfront at the top, followed by Blajat, then Anjufa and Bida’a.

An issue identified by the bureau is that waste bins are mostly placed on the sidewalks far away from those at the beach. The available bins are sparse and small, which increases the risk for waste drifting into the Arabian Gulf.

No monitoring plan

The audit bureau’s report shows that Kuwait Municipality’s shortcomings are also part of the problem. By law, Kuwait Municipality is responsible for the monitoring and protection of Kuwait’s coastal environment from waste, pollutants and all sorts of legal violations. The municipality’s jurisdiction includes both open areas and those which are part of licensed activities operated on the coast.

Departments of public hygiene and road works in the six governorates within Kuwait Municipality are responsible for the supervision and implementation of public hygiene contracts at the governorate level and preparing reports on the progress of their work. They also continuously follow-up hygiene work to prevent waste dumping in places other than those authorized. The department is also responsible for and issuing violations.

The departments didn’t properly fulfil these roles, the report says. For one, they didn’t ensure that waste was sorted by type, making it nearly impossible to dispose of different kinds of waste according to the best suited environmentally-sound method.

The municipality doesn’t have a clear plan to monitor companies contracted to clean Kuwait’s beaches and penalize them incase of a breach in contract, the report adds. Contracted hygiene companies are obliged by law to remove all waste found on the beach at all times, including dead fish. Companies that don’t send cleaners to manually clean the areas listed in their contract should be fined KD 50 per case per day. Those that don’t use machinery to clean the area are fined KD 30 per beach per day.

The municipality has recorded no violations against cleaning companies in regard to manual cleaning in three municipalities, Assima, Hawally and Mubarak Al-Kabeer, which is an indication that they are not properly documenting their inspection activities, says the report. Public hygiene departments in the six governorates have also made the municipality’s job difficult, as they don’t provide them with inspection reports assessing the performance of the contracted companies.