Al Wakra Municipality is working on implementing a number of projects to achieve environmental sustainability and support green transformation for the benefit of the inhabitants of the city, director engineer Mohamed Hassan al-Nuaimi told local Arabic daily Arrayah.
The details of these projects will be announced shortly. These include completing the conversion of a building of the Ministry of Municipality into a fully sustainable building, in addition to a study to convert other municipality buildings as well.
There will be a number of awareness workshops on several related topics such as renewable energy, waste management and recycling and the protection of environment. These workshops will target different segments and categories of people during the sustainability week October.
He said that the municipality has exerted great efforts in spreading green areas and public gardens in cooperation with the Public Gardens Department. The green areas in Al Wakra exceeded 1,770,070sq m in the first half of this year, which is 15% more than the previous year.
Al Wakra has a good number of various public beaches and gardens that offer visitors ample green spaces, kids play areas, and playgrounds for football and volleyball. The municipality has introduced nine mobile toilets at the Sealine beach area. During the first half of this year, it is estimated that number of the visitors of public beaches at Al Wakra amounted to 350,000, in addition to more than 83,000 visitors to the public gardens.
He further stressed that the municipality is keen to maintain the city's civilised urban look and exerts great efforts in this regard. For instance, 334 abandoned vehicles have been removed. The health control section at the municipality carried out 131,118 food health inspection tours during the first half of 2023, which was 31% more than the inspections done for the same period last year on food outlets and establishments. Such inspection tours resulted in issuing 2,514 violation reports regarding Law No 8 for 1990 on the regulation of human food control. Besides, 17 food outlets were shut for various periods.
During the first half of this year, the municipality issued 752 building permits and 484 building completion certificates.