JEDDAH — A recent fire in two workshops in Jeddah's north industrial zone has renewed calls for relocating the workshops to another area. It was believed that the municipality had assigned a nine square kilometer area outside Usfan for the new industrial area, zoned for 6,000 workshops and warehouses. Many residents of Al-Nuzha district complain of excessive traffic hazards, noise pollution and environmental waste and demanded the transfer of the workshops to another location away from residential neighborhoods. “Residents have only been hearing promises from the municipality, while they could see an increase in the number of workshops,” one resident said. However, Abdulaziz Al-Nahari, spokesman for Jeddah Municipality, said no decision was taken to move the workshops to Usfan as previously believed. He added that the area would be reorganized meeting environmental and safety requirements with the cooperation of many bodies, including the Civil Defense, as moving it to another location was inconvenient and entails many difficulties. One resident attributed the pollution in the area to the arbitrary crowding of the workshops, causing health and fire hazards. Other citizens describe the area as an environmental disaster, made worse by the scrap cars parked on the streets. A workshop supervisor suggested that reorganizing the area and closing down illegal shops would root out many of the problems. — SG
