The Ministry of Municipality and the Environment represented by the General Cleanliness Department recorded 4,691 violations of Public Hygiene Law since the law came into force from February 2018 to the end of January 2019. The Department collected over QR5.6m in term of fine for violating the law.

He said that a number of employees of the Ministry of Municipality and Environment are available at the control rooms of NCC to monitor the violation.

“The Ministry developed a plan to monitor the violations of cleanliness through the use of surveillance cameras at the National Command Center (NCC) of the Ministry of Interior,” said Al Shafi.

“The new plan helped reduce the violations significantly like the dumping of waste in a non-civilised manner by some individuals on the roads and public streets and cities, such as throwing personal waste, cigarette butts and spitting and other violations,” said Al Shafi.

He added that participation of the personnel and patrolling of the General Directorate of Traffic in monitoring violations of the law also helped to reduce the careless attitude of some individuals.

Al Shafi said that the awareness campaign ‘Keep it Clean’, which started in 2019, aims at educating all segments of society about the new public hygiene law which was issued in December 2017 and enforced in February 2018 in order to create public participation and cooperation with the Ministry.

To create awareness, he said that the Ministry installed 638 billboards on roadsides and banners were placed at the facilities of the government services complexes, municipalities, medical commission, Kahramaa, Karwa buildings, some shopping complexes like Lulu Hypermarkets, medical centers, Karwa Driving School, bus stands and Mall of Qatar to create the awareness in this regards.

“Five video footage carrying awareness messages were aired at Qatar TV, Al Rayyan TV and and voice messages on local radios in three languages. Cinema halls also run the similar messages to aware the audiences about hygiene rules,” said Al Shafi.

Al Shafi pointed out that the Ministry of Municipality and Environment did not aim to collect fines from the public, but the purpose was to curb the violations of the law in a bid to maintain public hygiene through ongoing awareness programs. He urged all segments of the society to participate the campaign by cooperate with the Department in maintaining public hygiene and protect the environment.