Muqbil Madhour Al Shammari, Director of General Cleanliness Department
Doha: The Ministry of Municipality and Environment (MME) represented by the General Cleanliness Department has intensified awareness campaigns to support State’s efforts to host FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 in a healthy and environmental-friendly manner.
“The Ministry has focused especially on awareness drive to influence the behaviour of people towards maintaining hygiene by shouldering their social responsibility,” said Director of General Cleanliness Department at MME, Muqbil Madhour Al Shammari while speaking in a Qatar Radio programme.
He said that the strict monitoring empowered by the public hygiene law is also in place to punish the violators.
“Preparations are underway to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup in a safe and healthy environment,” said Al Shammari.
He said that the programmes will be also launched to rehabilitate and develop the beaches in a way to make them more attractive for visitors during the mega sporting event.
“We are taking this big responsibility in coordination with the authorities concerned. The awareness plans and drives have been launched to reach all segments of the society to educate them through all communication channels — local media and social media,” said Al Shammari.
He said that awareness campaigns are being run in many languages with the support of graphics, videos and pamphlets.
“Any new idea from any entity to enhance the awareness drives is welcomed to reach out to all people residing in the country,” said Al Shammari.
To a question about most common violations recorded by the municipal inspectors during recent cleaning campaigns at beaches, Al Shammari said that the Department during the drives focused on creating awareness and distributing plastic bags to visitors and placing more containers. “The violations are being recorded in coordination with municipal inspectors to implement the law and monitor the beaches and public places but the major focus is on creating awareness to avoid violations,” said Al Shammari.
He said that the visitors of beaches are being educated about the laws related to hygiene and protecting the environment.
“Following the law No. 18 of 2017 of hygiene, municipal inspectors issue violation tickets against violators for throwing wastes at undesignated places. “The law is strict and strong in punishing the violators like imposing hefty fines which reache up to QR10,000 or QR25,000 for violating some provisions of the law in case of environment violations the violators fined more. In case of serious violation, the punishment could reach to imprisonment up to six months.”
But the Department, he said, focused on awareness drives to reach out the community to avoid committing violations. “We launched ‘Keep It Clean’ drive in 2017 which is still continued in different forms,” said Al Shammari.
He said that the Ministry is running awareness campaigns to create a sense of responsibility to coordinate with the Department in maintaining hygiene by adhering to the law. Al Shammari said that people can inform to the Ministry about the violations of hygiene law through its hotline 184 and Oun app.
