Celebratory water wars
Kuwait has recently witnessed a celebratory water war to commemorate the National and Liberations days. The war took place along the Arabian Gulf and coastal roads, and even extended to Nuwaiseeb, Sulaibikhat and the Northern deserts, where citizens, expats and GCC visitors consumed massive amounts of water that they sprayed at each other, or by throwing water-filled balloons. This calls for a serious action by all state departments as we are not a country with ice-topped mountains providing water supplies, nor do we have rivers or lakes. We receive fresh water from very costly water desalination plants.
In the past, our country used to purchase fresh drinking water from Shatt Al-Arab, received it from the two underground water wells we have in Roudhatain and Um Al-Aish, or from some smaller ones in Shamiya, Hawalli and Fintas. Water cost is very dear nowadays and one has to pay KD 0.8 per 1000 gallons while all state facilities get it subsidized for KD 0.25.
Our Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) ordered us to avoid squandering water during ablution even if we were doing it at the bank of an affluent river. I have to emphasize that I do rejoice for commemorating the National and Liberation days’ anniversaries but I am strongly against such a phenomena where huge amounts of water are unnecessarily wasted, not to mention the disrespect the process involves when kids humiliate people by pointing their water guns at them that are, sometimes, filled with urine.
What kind of parents arm their kids with all sorts of water guns to use them in annoying others and disrespecting them with the excuse of celebrating? I find the government fully responsible for this because it allows importing such gear in the first place. A real water-based war can be seen approaching and Kuwait still annually consumes 180 billion gallons of water with a very large cost.
The parliament has to allocate a session to discuss this water absurdity, especially since lawmakers had approved a law allowing the government to increase the prices of electricity and water consumption on expats and companies while exempting citizens. I believe it is high time for launching government and parliament-supported national awareness campaigns using social media networks to start spreading a new culture for celebrating national anniversaries because what I witnessed along the coastal line was so disgraceful.
The bottom line is that it is absolutely unacceptable to violate others liberties because this is a trait of barbarian people. Your freedom ends when you violate the freedom of the people around you. At least this is what we have learnt and we can all see how the people of UAE and Oman celebrate similar occasions among various races of people without offending anyone’s dignity. Allah Almighty will hold us accountable for wasting water and I do hope we will stop this habit.
—Translated by Kuwait Times