Report broken, overfilled bins and dirty streets Online: Official JEDDAH – Over 25,000 rubbish bins in all districts of this city are coded with letters and numbers that allow them to be tracked by the website set up by the municipality, according to Abdul Majeed Al-Batati, Assistant to the Deputy Mayor for Services in Jeddah Mayoralty. These codes have been provided so that Jeddah residents can register complaints with the municipality if the company contracted to collect rubbish does not empty the bins on time, if the bins are broken, or if there are not enough bins on a particular street. Currently three companies are contracted by the municipality to collect rubbish in the city. Al-Batati encouraged members of the public to report poor service, broken rubbish bins and general dissatisfaction with street cleaning through the municipality's website. He explained that complaints can be filed at www.jeddah.gov.sa.cleaning.aspx. Alternatively, the public can file a complaint by telephoning 940. Once a complaint is lodged either by telephone or computer, it can be tracked on the municipality's website. Most people do not notice the alphanumeric codes on the rubbish bins that they use and if they do, they do not know what they are for. “These codes allow the municipality to pinpoint the location of the reported bin,” said Al-Batati. “Once a complaint is lodged against a particular bin, immediate action will be taken. A copy of the complaint will be sent at once to the company contracted to provide cleaning services for that area in question. Another copy will be sent to the municipality's contracting department. If the situation is not satisfactorily resolved, the contracting department will impose fines upon the company contracted to carry out cleaning services,” Al-Batati said. At the moment, the English version of the website has not be en completed and complaints can only be lodged in Arabic. However, Al-Batati said that there will “be an English version soon”. The website also allows the individual filing a complaint to upload a photo (maximum size 300KB) of the unclean street or broken bins. On Monday afternoon, Saudi Gazette took photos of a broken rubbish bin and of another that seemed to have been left for days without being emptied. Then at 3 P.M., we logged onto the municipality's website. It took only two minutes to fill out the complaint form and upload the two photos. At 4.30 P.M. we received a call from the municipality acknowledging that the complaint had been received and asking if we had any further information to add. A few minutes later we received an email giving us a report number that we could use to track the action that had been taken. By Tuesday afternoon, 24 hours after the complaint was made, we visited the two bins again and found that the overfilled rubbish bin had been emptied, but the broken bin had not been replaced. Using the report number, we tracked the action on the computer and found that the file was closed and listed as “action taken”. We then used the online form to remind the municipality that the broken rubbish bin was still there waiting to be replaced.
