Girl power does it again

It has taken the passion of three young school-leavers to make Bahrain finally sit up and take notice of an environmental catastrophe that is threatening the kingdom’s public beaches.

Durra Al Ali, 17, Zain Marhoon, 18, and Sara Seyadi, 18, are all set to leave Bahrain to embark on their academic careers at universities in the UK in September.
But before they left they were determined to do something about the woeful state of Bahrain’s beaches.
In a symbolic gesture, the girls recently gathered 80 young volunteers to stage a one-day clean-up to rid Al Jazair Beach of piles of dumped refuse and rubbish swept ashore by the sea.
Officials in the Bahrain Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s (BCCI) tourism committee also say that a centralised body with effective powers desperately needs to be set up to deal with issues such as the appalling state of Bahrain’s public beaches.
“One afternoon we decided to head to the beach,” explained Durra, “there were lots of families there but the beach was covered in garbage.
“There were children playing near the garbage and one little boy was even playing with a piece of rubbish. We watched people dumping their trash on the beach and we felt obligated to do something about it.”
The girls immediately decided to put together a campaign to clean up the beach.
They designed posters displaying pictures of rubbish littered stretches of beach and displayed them around the country. They also established a website and a group on the social networking website Facebook to promote the clean-up.
The girl’s initiative proved so successful that the Southern Municipality and cleaning company MBM Alam Flora jumped on board, providing equipment to aid the clean-up.
“At first we expected it to be a small beach clean-up,” said Zain, “and then it got bigger and bigger and on the day more than 80 people showed up. We ended up collecting 50 big bags of rubbish. It was disgusting; there were diapers, chicken bones, children’s shoes, bottles and plastic bags everywhere.”
The girls also said that the dumping gives Bahrain a bad image. 
“The rubbish dumping pollutes the sea and gives out country a bad image,” said Sara.
“Visitors come to the beach and all they see is garbage,” added Zain. “Tourists will see that the beaches are filthy and think that we are too.
“The only clean beaches are the private ones. It hurts, it’s horrible.
“We want to raise awareness. We need to think of future generations.”
The girls said the that the impressive turn-out made them optimistic that there are people out there who want to make a difference, but there is a long way to go.
So what do the girls think can be done about the situation?
“There are some countries where people are fined for dumping. Our government should implement fines and place a security guard on the beach to make sure people clean-up after themselves. They should also provide garbage bins, so that people don’t have an excuse to dump on the beach,” said Zain.
BCCI tourism committee head Nabeel Kanoo echoed the girl’s concerns: “There are only a few public beaches and they are filthy and dirty and unattended. It is sad to see.”
But he said the only way to tackle the problem was to set up a centralised tourism body, with real and effective powers.
“Unless there is a proper tourism body with proper authority and power to do these things we can talk until we are blue in the face. Nothing will change until then. This will solve ninety per cent of the issues including the cleanliness of the beaches.
“No one is in charge of looking after these things within the ministry and we need to create a body to look after the beaches and to keep them in a good state.
 “I would love to thank the girls on a job well done and I hope they keep up the good work and aren’t put off by what they see. I hope they keep doing the fantastic work they are doing for the country.”
The girls are keen to stage another clean-up but say it may have to wait until they return from their first term at university. “We definitely want to do it again.” said Zain.
“When we get back from university for the holidays we’ll organise a bigger and better one. Next time we’ll put advertisements in the newspapers and put up even more posters all over the country.”

Special Report
By -RdS-
editor@gulfweekly.com