Sunday, March 25, 2007

Fujairah’s ‘Breathtaking Coastline’ is often Trashed

This guy (and his mate in the tractor) at the Fujairah Municipality do a magnificent job cleaning up the beaches every day with this hungry vacuum cleaner and sand sifter.

But give a couple of hours and the waves will belch onto the beach all their foreign bodies—sandals, bottles, packets, glass, rope, polystyrene plates, leftovers from the picnic—and the beach soon becomes a shambles.

Visitors to Fujairah will be attracted when they read web sites like UAE Interact and this posting entitled, ‘U.A.E. Culture and Heritage: Fujairah’:

“Fujairah, with a breathtaking coastline of more than 90km, is the only emirate situated entirely along the Gulf of Oman.….”

“Fujairah is a place of considerable natural beauty where jagged mountains and valleys sweep down to the settled palm-fringed coastal plain.”

It sounds idyllic but it doesn’t always square with the beach I walk every day.

It is a breathtaking coastline but visitors will want their money back if we don’t put our rubbish in the bins and stop heaving it out of cars and boats.

Geoff Pound

Image: Fujairah Municipality Beach Cleaner and the relentless rubbish.