Prince Abdul Aziz Bin Majed Bin Abdul Aziz, the Emir of Madina, has ordered the setting up of a committee to survey and detect uncovered and unused wells. The committee consists of representatives of the Municipality, the Police, Civil Defense, Water and Agriculture Authority and district mayors. This initiative comes after rising incidents of gaping wells taking the lives of several innocent, unsuspecting children. At villages and Bedouin settlements, numerous unused dry wells are a bleak reminder of the dozens of children whose lives ended abruptly. Fayez Naif Al-Mutairi, father of Fahd and Mashari who disappeared into the darkness of a well at King Fahd land plot, gives the following heart-wrenching account of the fall of his children into the well: “More than 15 years ago, I bought a piece of land at King Fahd land plot in Madina. The whole area was occupied by farms and, naturally, a number of wells were dug up. Over time, the farms were converted into residential areas, plotted and distributed to citizens as grants by the municipality. “However, there was no defined mechanism for the filling up of wells, including the one my sons fell into. We discovered that the well was filled up randomly and, as the years passed, the mouth of the well became exposed. My son Fahd went to play outside and, in the blink of an eye, he fell into the well. My other son Mashari attempted to rescue him but met the same fate. My neighbors and I went around pouring concrete over the mouths of all the wells we were able to find. We called on the municipality to make inspection rounds in the area and fill up all the wells but our appeals went unheeded.” Al-Mutairi added that Madina is originally an agricultural city, with more than 21,000 farms. Since many farms were turned into residential areas, with each farm containing more than one well, one can imagine the number of wells lying just beneath the ground surface, waiting to swallow more victims. He concluded that the filling up of wells is the responsibility of the Municipality and Civil Defense. - Al-Madina __
