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Exercise Keeping Jeddah Clean: Giant Crane Lift For Port Stature
11 August 2009
Driving through the streets of Jeddah it is hard not to notice the huge trash bins and the men in uniform who are clearly trying their best to keep the city clean. How much are we trying to do the same? Are we taking any sort of initiatives? Jeddah has seen a rise in population, estimated to be as much as 3.4 million, according to the Municipality. Jeddah produces more than 4,200 tons of garbage every day. “Most GCC countries rank in the top ten worldwide in terms of waste production per capita,” according to Qatar Today. “Things have changed for sure,” said Abu Abdullah, a Saudi who was born and brought up in Jeddah. “First there were Yemenis sweeping the streets, but now it’s Bangladeshis. Things are mechanized now, but there is room for improvement. Attitudes of the public need to change.” It is common to give examples from the West to indicate civic sense and responsibility, but we may not have to go so far to learn these lessons. Qatar has taken a lot of steps to initiate recycling among its residents, especially among the youth. The Qatar Foundation, a home to six world-class universities, has planted the seeds of recycling by placing containers that allow students to separate their trash in their universities as well as dorms. The UAE has the Dubai Recycling Park, the first one in the Middle East. Apart from this, the Abu Dhabi government has announced plans to start door-to-door collection of recyclable materials and place bins in residential areas for organic and recyclable waste. To solve the problem of overflowing bins, an electronic underground waste disposal system has been started in selected areas in Abu Dhabi. Many Jeddah residents are unaware of the concept of recycling. The more that they learn about recycling the more enthusiastic they are about it. One of the major advantages of recycling is that it saves energy. Steel and aluminum can be recycled hundreds of times. Even though the educated might not be fully aware of the concept of recycling, there is a group of people who survive by selling garbage. Fatima Haroon, a 24-year-old Chadian, searches for aluminum cans and left over food with her daughter tied on her back. She gets SR2.50 for a kilo of aluminum and makes about SR50 a week. For her life has become tough as more women have entered the job of trash picking. Apart from them, there are Pakistanis and Bangladeshis who do it, too. Saudi Arabia has also taken steps toward recycling. Currently, there are six companies involved. “The main problem that residents face is the overflowing trash bins,” said Suhail Raza. “For me, it’s a bigger problem than people throwing Pepsi cans out of their cars because most of garbage here is food waste and it stinks and causes diseases.” According to the Baladiyah (Jeddah municipality) workers, most of the trash is emptied once a day in residential areas and twice on main roads. Mohammed Zubin, a Bangladeshi who has been working with the municipality for six years, said that trash on Jeddah roads has increased during the past few years. “Increasing labor or trash bins will not solve the problem because people need to change. Why are London or Singapore so clean? It is because the people there throw trash in the right place and they don’t litter.” Both the residents of Jeddah and the Baladiyah workers believe that implementing a fine would be the solution to this problem. Laws have always served as a tool in regulating public behavior and would surely help us move toward a cleaner Jeddah. Hopefully very soon, when we see an African woman picking beverage cans out of the waste bins, rather than looking at her with pitiful eyes, we would laud her sense of recycling. Giant cranes lift Jeddah port stature Jeddah’s port skyline changed drastically on Monday with the arrival, 19 months after the beginning of the construction of the Red Sea Gate Terminal (RSGT), of four giant quayside cranes. The huge machines, the biggest type of ship-to-shore crane in the world, berthed at the new Red Sea Gate terminal quay at precisely 10 a.m. after arriving in Jeddah late on Sunday to wait for pilotage. Mazen Matar, the project director of the RSGT who was on the quayside to see the arrival, looked at the massive machines and commented that high efficiency of the cranes and the huge load capabilities were necessary to deal with the new generation of container super-carriers and would have a tremendous economic impact on the Kingdom. “We have the tools; now we can finish the job,” he observed. The journey from Shanghai was not without some challenges as the specially designed carrier had to wait out rough seas caused by typhoons for several days. The size and configuration of the cranes carried, already assembled, on deck required that the ship, the Zhen Hua 25, be sailed with great skill and with a constant eye on sea and weather conditions. The first hint of the arrival was two and a half hours before docking when they were still 15 or so kilometers off shore. Their massive superstructures eased over the horizon, followed a full half hour later by the hull of the ship. Each crane will require two days to unload from the ship. Each will be rolled on train-type steel wheels onto the quayside where it will be jacked up, the wheel bogeys turned through 90 degrees and the crane lowered onto the rails embedded in the quay. “It is a very tricky operation,” Peter Reynolds, RSGT project manager commented. “These are massive pieces of equipment and it requires considerable skill to offload them.” When all 10 of the new cranes have been delivered they will put RSGT in the front rank of the world’s container terminals. The cranes manufactured by ZPMC, China, are specially designed to serve next generation container-ships that can carry over 12,000 full size containers. They are capable of handling two 40-foot or four 20-foot containers in one lift. Their ability to lift 85 tons under their spreader beams and move the load over a distance of up to 24 rows and at 65m above the water level is unique in Jeddah. Only a handful of container terminals around the world have equipment with similar specifications. An additional two ship-to-shore cranes of the same type will be delivered next month.
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