No sanitation in 41% of Saudi houses

DAMMAM — According to the latest figures released by the General Authority for Statistics, 41.2 percent of houses occupied by Saudis do not have proper sanitation, Makkah daily reported. There are over 3.4 million houses occupied by Saudi families and 1.4 million of them are not connected to the sewage system while 32,350 of the houses set up their own sewage system through a private company, the paper said quoting a source. Head of the Shoura Council’s Water, Agriculture and Environment Committee Abbas Hadi said the entity responsible for sanitation in all areas of the Kingdom is the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs. “The ministry is responsible for planning every city in the Kingdom and it should ensure that every city has basic utilities. The ministry should allow the sale or lease of a property without ensuring that the infrastructure is complete,” said Hadi. He also said the ministry has been focusing on the electricity network while it neglected other facets of the infrastructure.