Dearth of services impede development of east Jeddah

JEDDAH — East of Jeddah residents have submitted over 900 informal complaints to the Ministry of Commerce over what they described as "frequent and chaotic municipal violations that impede the development of our neighborhoods." The residents, according to Makkah daily, stressed the need for inclusion of these neighborhoods in the development and modernization plans adopted by the Jeddah Municipality for other areas. According to the complaints, poor infrastructure, shoddy municipal services, random street planning, building violations and scarcity of parks and green spaces in addition to lack of proper schools are the most important demands by the residents. "We want our neighborhoods including  Al-Samer, Al-Rabie and Al-Ojawad, as well as old neighborhoods in the east of Jeddah to be integrated into the modernization and development plans of the city,” the complaint read. One of the contributors to the complaint, Talal Al-Mutairi, said that the problems are not exclusively in one neighborhood, but included the majority of neighborhoods east of the highway. He said that the increased population density of these neighborhoods meant the municipality needs to develop the areas and monitor violations, Al-Mutairi said. "The fact is that those neighborhoods were established some 30 years ago and are still the same says something about development plans," he said. Urban planning expert, Hani Naqshbandi, said that poor infrastructure in such neighborhoods was due to a lack of thorough urban planning. "But having a poor infrastructure doesn't mean leaving inhabitants to suffer daily from chaos. One of the most important solutions is bringing them into developmental plans even if that means expropriation and re-planning the streets and identifying suitable areas for schools, public parks, in line with the population density in that area," Naqshabandi said. A Jeddah municipality source said the municipality does not discriminate in the provision of service to different neighborhoods in Jeddah, and does not neglect the official neighborhoods in the east of the province. The source referred to the opening of a number of public parks in neighborhoods east of Jeddah as well as development plans for these neighborhoods.