It’s time to take responsibility for our rubbish

Recently, the social media community reacted angrily to some people throwing rubbish on Qurum beach, one of the best beaches in Muscat, after an event hosted by some community. They demanded that such practices that degrade beautiful places be handled strictly by imposing harsh penalties on offenders.

In this context, we must discuss the idea of charging fees for garbage to be collected and recycled at modern industrial facilities as it happens in developed countries. This environmental procedure will teach a very important lesson to citizens: that there is a price to be paid for the consequences of wrong practices.

After a look at the civilised societies in developed countries, we find that cleanliness has become a positive, innate, and involuntarily behaviour there. There is no doubt this should be followed here also, and the society should be aware of the importance of cleanliness.

When we think that removing waste and maintaining cleanliness are the duties of other agencies that do these services for free, it leads to indifference on the part of us as individuals. We tend to ignore the tremendous efforts exerted by the labourers who stay up all night and clean the waste so that we can live in a clean environment.

What should be clarified at this point is the fact that the individual should be responsible for preserving the safety and cleanliness of his environment, society, village and city. Every individual must take the responsibility for their every action, and this way our society can be a model for civil societies.

In fact, we are encouraged to know that a study is considering imposing fees on handling rubbish in the country, about 1.600 rials per month on every household in the Sultanate. Gathering and administrating rubbish costs nearly 100 million rials per year. This amount isn’t small, and can be redirected to sectors with higher importance: education, social welfare, and other key sectors.

Imposing fees on gathering and administrating rubbish is important not to save and redirect money, but to develop a positive and responsible behaviour among people with respect to dealing with rubbish.

Every individual should bear the responsibility for his rubbish. It is a flaw that other parties — even if it is the government — bear the responsibility of cleaning the rubbish that comes from our houses and shops. Removing waste should be the responsibility of individuals and society.

However, we should all be convinced that cleanliness should be a priority in all our behaviours, and wrong behaviour shouldn’t be justified under any circumstances, if we want our country to remain clean and beautiful.

What we witness in the streets, beaches, shops and especially restaurants is really disgusting, and such wrong behaviour should be stopped and perpetrators must be brought to justice.

Unfortunately, we see the municipality labourers sweeping the waste from the beach and the green grass of Qurum’s beach, especially, on weekends, thrown by families that enjoyed the day and were too lazy to dump their waste in the garbage bins. We see labourers wandering in the streets to pick up the waste dumped on the road by vehicle riders.

It is unfortunate that we have reached this level of irresponsibility in cleanliness. However, as we said earlier, with the absence of any laws prohibiting waste, it is natural to find such practices and even more. Therefore, we should immediately start the enactment of legislations and laws, and impose fees on collecting and disposing of rubbish.

Sadly, some encourage the wrong behaviour, not recognising the duties of individuals and their role in society, and walk in the wrong way in a clear deviation from the responsibility of individual and society.

Of course, such penalties and fees on collecting rubbish will be met with a negative response and refusal by those who don’t want our country to be clean, and those who refuse to take responsibility for their own actions.