Fujairah Ruler sets up environmental panel

The committee is to submit as quickly as possible a detailed report to the Ruler’s office about the environment situation in that area to enable the local government to take the appropriate measures to protect the environment, as well as the health and safety of the people living in those areas.

The Committee, to be known as the Fujairah Environment Committee, is made up of representatives from the Amiri Court, the Fujairah Police, Fujairah Municipality and Fujairah Civil Defence.

The decision followed several protests by the residents of the Tawiyeen village, who refused to allow into the area equipment and machineries for the setting up of a new cement factory in the area, claiming that the factory poses a serious threat to their health.

According to Faisal Khalil, a resident in the area, Al Tawiyeen and the surrounding villages that are situated close to the stone quarry and cracker machines were under serious threat from the rampant explosions in the mountains for raw materials to feed the factory and the thick clouds of dust created by the operation of the cracker machines.

He said this had negatively affected the life of the people in the surrounding areas not only because of the thick clouds of dust that always fill the atmosphere which, of course, pose a health hazard, but also from the loud explosions which cause noise pollution and frighten women and children, adding that the dusty atmosphere will spread asthma among the people there, especially children.

“A number of houses have deleloped cracks in their walls as a result of the earth tremors that accompany every explosion,” he said.

Karim Jasim, another resident in the area, said that the cracker machines were, at first, at a distance of about five kilometres but got closer as time went by.

“It is now about one kilometre away and the new factory is going to be built at about 500 metres away from the residential areas. This poses greater danger to the health of the residents,” he said, adding that although the Fujairah Municipality had ordered the old factory to use filters to avoid air pollution, which the factory did, but this does not purify the air 100 per cent. “How then do they allow the setting up of a new cement factory at just few hundred metres away from us,” he asked.