Friday 14 / March / 2025
Muscat: Visitors to Dhofar during Khareef are leaving enough litter behind to fill eight football stadiums, according to the government environment agency.
Oman’s biggest waste management company has asked visitors who come to the Dhofar Governorate for the Khareef season to cut down on the amount of plastic they use, after revealing that as little as five plastic bags discarded by every visitor during their trip is enough to cover as much as eight football fields.
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To combat littering by visitors to Dhofar, be’ah, Oman Environmental Services Holding Company, is currently running awareness campaigns to engage those who travel to Oman’s southern governorate to stop the potential pile-up of mountains of rubbish, which not only spoil the trip for others, but damage the environment as well.
Speaking to Times of Oman, a spokesman from be’ah said: “If each visitor to Dhofar uses just five plastic bags and discards them during his visit, there would over 700,000 plastic bags. This is enough trash to cover around eight football fields.”
Over 100,000 people have visited Salalah as of Sunday, July 21, according to the National Centre for Statistics and Information.
As the numbers continue to increase, be’ah’s plan is to tackle the issue at its core by talking to tourists directly.
The be’ah spokesman said: “We are working on a campaign called ‘That's Not Us: Our Salalah is Beautiful, Preserve It’, which is a continuation of the campaign Oman Tistahel (Arabic for ‘Oman deserves it’).”
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As part of the campaign, be’ah has been creating videos that show discarded plastic on the beautiful hills and green mountains of Dhofar, then adding the caption ‘That's Not Us’. Teams from be’ah have also been on the ground and visited tourist areas, talking to tourists and helping them dispose of their waste in a responsible manner, while telling them to lower their plastic consumption.
“The campaign is primarily aimed at visitors to Dhofar and aims to spread environmental awareness to bring a stop to visitors randomly discarding trash at tourist locations and to lower plastic consumption per person,” the spokesman added, saying that Oman Tistahel, the precursor to this campaign, began this year in the northern governorate of Musandam, then moved to North and South Al Batinah, Al Buraimi and Al Dhahirah.
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Ahmed Al Shanfari, a lawyer and member of the Oman Human Rights Commission from Salalah, previously experienced such littering first-hand when he returned to his hometown and saw plastic waste covering a beautiful picnic area in Dhofar.
Al Shanfari told Times of Oman: “Unfortunately, some beautiful locations are filled with plastic bottles and waste and the remains of food. The place was in a wonderful state and some people have visited and left all of that waste. Imagine such a person leaving waste at this site after coming there. Those that come afterwards will not be able to enjoy themselves there because of the waste. So they look for other cleaner spots, and then leave those dirty as well. This is not just in Dhofar, but all over Oman.
“Of course you will have a negative feeling while seeing something like this anywhere in Oman,” he added. “If you go to any spot to enjoy yourself in the midst of nature, the same nature that His Majesty Sultan Qaboos asked us to keep safe, this harms not just the view, but also animals which can eat the waste and die. This is why I suggested a fine as heavy as OMR100 for when someone does this here, so that people will adhere to the law.” Dhofar Municipality is actively targeting waste and littering. “We agree with you about applying the fine to stop violations and those who don’t care about public cleanliness.”
