Recycling waste essential to energy conservation: official
Admin chief in KIA kept dividend checks in his office: finmin
KUWAIT CITY, Aug 1, (KUNA): Kuwait Municipality Chairman Osama Al-Otaibi said Wednesday that recycling waste could contribute to conserving energy and resources, in addition to diversifying sources of income in Kuwait.
Al-Otaibi made his remarks to reporters on the sidelines of a workshop organized by the Municipality’s Environmental Affairs Committee, entitled “encouraging recycling industry in Kuwait”.
The workshop aims at reaching out to the private sector in the country to understand the problems it faces with recycling, AlOtaibi said.
The municipality’s members would benefit from such a seminar by acquiring information from experts in the field, he noted, adding they would also gain real statistics on the subject that will assist them with making strategies and regulations.
Furthermore, Al-Otaibi indicated the workshop highlights several issues and challenges facing the recycling field, notably land shortage, bureaucracy, and imposed observation by inexperienced individuals in the field.
For her part, Environmental Affairs Committee’s Chairperson Eng Maha Al-Baghli said Kuwait deals with wastes by either landfilling or burning them, noting some neighboring countries have tested recycling wastes and succeeded in it.
In the last 10 years, UAE’s Sharjah Emirate has burnt its wastes entirely, Al-Baghli mentioned, adding that it has, however, succeeded recently in recycling about 75 percent of them, with the rest 25 percent being landfilled.
“There are several recycling factories in Kuwait. Thus, we asked their owners to provide us with their opinions and information in order to help us evaluate the volume of wastes and their sources, and be acquainted with the challenges facing this industry,” she said.
Minister of Finance Dr Nayef Al-Hajraf said an administration director in Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA) kept dividend checks in favor of KIA in his office, instead of depositing them in the treasury of the authority, reports Al-Rai daily.
In response to a parliamentary inquiry, Al-Hajraf disclosed the abovementioned checks are profits of companies contributed by Kuwait International Investment Company and were received by the director of Development and Loans Department before his illness and sudden death. The checks were not found; hence, the issuance of new ones. A settlement has been concluded with this company and it received all the checks, he added.