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By Sreenivasa Rao
Keeping an eye along vast stretches of roadways across the desert land is not an easy task. The inundated roads with sand in the Middle East whether inside city or highways are posing a challenging environment to baladias and contract cleaning companies as well. Gulf nations’ municipalities and street cleaning companies have always been busy with charting new strategies to mitigate the stormy challenges. If one look at the positive side of the coin, the everdaunting challenges are resulting in innovative technology applications and solutions, while the focus on environment protection is also catching up fast. The baladias and street cleaning service providers are moving up the value chain by adopting mechanised sweepers, electric-power driven sweeping vehicles, manpower management, etc. Clean Middle East spoke to Dubai Municipality and select service providers on the challenges being faced by the road/street cleaning segment.
DM: Benchmark for the GCC
Dubai Municipality (DM) has emerged as not only a world-class provider of civic amenities in addition to maintaining the streets and roads clean, but also a benchmark for Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries in terms of quality services. The DM is moving ahead to reach the target set as part of Masterplan-2030, as part of which, the focus of baladiya is on economic growth and social development through its integrated approach to a sustainable and innovative waste and clean management system. Dubai Municipality is giving utmost priority to the sustainability factor as it is keen to bring this initiative to fruition. Some of the initiatives include reducing waste to minimal or zero level.
Masterplan-2030
Dubai’s current population is over two million and the city is set to house 3.5million by 2030. The steep rise in population numbers would put more pressure on streets and highways. The high level of awareness these days has actually helped us reduce the amount of municipal waste produced per day. The waste generation is to the tune of 7,300 tonnes per day in the emirate and the average waste generation per person is 2.2kg. The waste disposal would pose a major challenge to Dubai Municipality to keep the streets, roads and highways clean. Dubai Municipality is responding to the current demand for efficient and effective waste management to keep the city with clean and hygiene standards. Eng Abdulmajeed Abdulaziz Saifaie, Director, Waste Management Department, DM, says: “With unmatched quality services, DM is a benchmark for GCC. Our target is to bring down the land filling to 10 per cent or zero level by 2030 as part of the Master Plan. We’re also focusing on maintaining clean and hygiene standards on streets, roads and highways. The pressure on roads increases as the population grows.”
Dubai Municipality is globally acclaimed for its quality hygiene services. Elaborating on measures taken for ensuring Dubai roads clean and hygiene, Eng Saifaie explains: “We have deployed more number of mechanised sweepers on cleaning city roads and highways. Dubai is known for deploying latest technology applications in every possible space to provide better and fast services. It has been using many mechanized sweepers and upgrade them or replace them with latest sweeping machines.” The major parts of street/road cleaning are inside city roads, highways and industrial zones. The major focus of DM has been on these segments to maintain world-class standards in Dubai.
Bracing for Expo-2020
Dubai is gearing up for Expo-2020 which will surely position the country as the world’s most sought after place for business and employment. The Dubai Municipality is flexing its muscles to meet the anticipated demand for civic amenities in the emirate as part of the Dh30.84 billion Expo 2020 bill as pledged by the UAE. Elaborating on the future plans, Eng Saifaie said: “Improvement is a continuous task as we keep upgrading every year to meet the increasing demand in cleaning, hygiene and environment areas. We’re aiming for Expo-2020 and it will take Dubai to the next level on the growth factor. We’re also implementing scheduled awareness programmes at schools, private companies and government departments. We come up with new concepts on cleaning, hygiene, environment factors every season. We’ll complete the plantations at landfills very soon. It has been in practice. Desert clean is also another major activity of the DM.” In order to provide better services to the people, DM undertakes an annual survey taking opinions on several aspects of civic amenities. “This will provide us feedback from people and we’ll act accordingly fulfilling the needs and requirements. The annual survey will also gauge our performance as well,” adds Eng Saifaie.
As the DM undertakes road cleaning within city, outskirts and highways, it prefers to use customised sweeping vehicles as per the requirements. A delegation headed by Eng Hussain Nasser Lootah, Director General of Dubai Municipality participated in the official mission related to Expo2020 held in the City of Paris on June 12, 2013.
The civic body has signed an agreement with the city of Lyon. The agreement of friendship and co-operation is aimed at strengthening bilateral relations by finding ways to cooperate in the field of municipal work. The agreement also encourages and facilitates the exchange of information and experiences in the fields of economic and cultural relations, particularly in construction and infrastructure, which includes the exchange of the lightening system for modern and historical buildings applied by the city of Lyon.
Going Green
On the other hand, Green concept is catching up in the region. DM is also making efforts to bring in new environment-friendly practices in all its activities including road sweeping segment. The DM is taking stringent measures on cleaning desert and imposing heavy fines on littering. Right from saving fuel of sweeping machines to environment protection, a wide range of activities are being implemented by the civic body.
Free Trade Zones
With about 10 more free trade zones coming up in Dubai, the emirate is already a home to over 20 free trade zones. This has resulted in a lot of industrial activity leading to heavy pressure on external and internal roads in the emirate. The DM is taking all possible measures to keep external roads clean. The Dubai Municipality prefers to provide street cleaning services on its own. Some free zones works have been outsourced. “There’s more demand coming from free zones for cleaning services as the industrial activity is increasing by the day,” said Eng Saifaie.
Sandstorm clear up
Sand storms and dust are a common and persistent challenge for the Gulf nations particularly during the summer and spring due to the ‘Shamal Winds’ (strong winds coming from North) cause depositing a grainy carpet over the roads.
This keeps Municipal workers busy always shovelling loads of sand from choked highways and arterial roads. Cleaning highways is a big challenge for Municipalities as sand on highways cause accidents as drivers can’t control the vehicles. Dubai Municipality has established a special team exclusively on emergency calls for this task. Adding to this, another challenge comes up in form of debris picked up by the strong winds. Warehouses and industrial units are suffering from the stormy winds as the fine sand enters warehouses after a heavy sand wave.
City roads
In addition to heavy winds carrying sand onto the city roads, Dubai is also facing a problem of littering. “Yes, the major challenge is littering,” says Saifaie. DM is taking up several initiatives to spread awareness about cleanliness and hygiene standards among people in the emirate.
Municipalities and service providers are equipped with latest technology-driven sweepers. For instance, Dulsco Waste Management Solutions is providing street cleaning or road sweeping service as one of the supplementary services that it offers as part of the wide range of cleaning services. “The road cleaning service was introduced couple of years ago and has been a mainstay in our operations. We deploy our sweepers on long term and short term basis across the UAE. The sweepers are used depending on the conditions of the roads,” said Paresh Karia, Acting Head of Dulsco Waste Management Solutions.
However, the company doesn’t see much demand coming from municipalities in the region. Expressing his views on this, Karia said ‘not as such’ and continued saying “municipalities are using their own sweepers and they buy sweepers as required. We only provide the sweeping service and are not selling sweepers. Road sweeping service was included in the scope by Municipality in the tenders floated recently.”
However, pinning hopes on the market recovery, Karia anticipates an encouraging growth in the segment in the near future, while adding, “we will expanded gradually with Municipality projects and privately developed areas as market is likely grow now.” Like any other segment, street cleaning services are also witnessing an increasing competition in the market. “Mostly developers and FM companies purchase sweepers based on sufficient requirement. There is competition in the market and we project Dulsco as one-stop shop for related services to remain leaders the market,” opines Karia.
Stormy Highways
Clearing of heavy dust from roads is a difficult task considering the Middle East conditions. The piling of sand on highways often results in accidents as it’s difficult to control the vehicles on such roads. Elaborating on the challenges being faced by Dulsco, Karia explains: “Clearing of roads especially after a storm or Shamal is a huge challenge. It takes time and effort to mobilise resources. Dulsco’s teams are trained to handle such conditions. We mobilise resources and equipment and deploy these as per the worst-affected areas. Mechanical sweepers remain the standard for sweeping heavy material like large amount of sand.”
General Machinery Agencies LLC is another major player in the street cleaning segment. The company represents Johnston Sweeper Co UK / Johnston North America, Beam Specialist Sweeper Co, Denmark, and other specialist Municipal Machines for the Middle East region. The five-decade old UAE-based company has offices in Jeddah, Riyadh, Al-Khobar and Canada.
Zaki Siddiqui, Managing Partner, General Machinery Agencies, said: “Specially selling sweepers to most City Cleaning Operators is a difficult job. They are mostly not aware of the various Options and Models which are available to choose. As such our Philosophy is to sell an Application. We always ask the client various questions such as the Terrain, paved or unpaved, Area, Small streets or Highway. We have 1 to 14m3 machines available with more than 100 various Options to choose with. We build a machine according to the need of a client. If he is sweeping in a lot of sand his need will be with different Options and Water Nozzles to suppress dust from climate.” In the Middle East selling has been a challenge as well as fun as most of the Operators think Sweeper is a Standard Machine and will work in every terrain.
“We can only address some criteria with Sizes of Machines and its Various Options which make the machine work well. We are continuously doing efforts towards environmentally Friendly machines and using the best technology to suit the Area but frankly speaking our Middle Eastern Countries do not have the Fuel needed to meet the most Stringent California EPA regulations as our Fuel contains more sulfur so we get Engine Injector and other Problems. Even though we produce most Oil in Saudi Arabia and or UAE but the oil is refined outside. We do have other Engines such as LPG but yet the market is not ready with the supply,” explains Siddiqui.
Tandeef’s electric road sweepers
The UAE is leading the way in street cleaning technology for Middle East region. The nation has recently witnessed the launch of electric-powered street sweeping vehicles in Sharjah as Tandeef, the waste collection and city-wide street cleaning division of Bee’ah, has rolled out a new range of electric-powered vehicles enhance operations to clean the city’s streets and collect waste estimated at 600,000 tonnes a day.
Bee’ah is a Sharjah-based integrated environmental and waste management company and anticipating that this new fleet will add to the environment protection. The new electric-powered vehicles are equipped with ‘zero emission’ mobile equipment such as new waste compacters, urban vacuum cleaners, automated sweepers, street vacuums and the region’s first solar-powered boats that can collect up to two hundred kilograms of waste from Sharjah’s lagoons and floating debris.
Commenting on the new fleet, His Excellency Salim Al Owais, Chairman of Bee’ah said: “This is yet another first for Sharjah, the Green Emirate. With our new ‘zero emission’ fleet and region’s first solar boat, we are working to keep the environment safe and pure for residents in Sharjah. Bee’ah will continue to lead the way towards sustainability and waste management in the UAE. Keeping us on-track to achieve our aim of zero-waste to landfill by 2015, this new environmentally-friendly range of equipment will help reduce carbon emissions, noise and pollution while keeping Sharjah clean.” “We have set out continuously to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions of our company’s equipment and vehicles and this is yet another step on that path,” said Bee’ah Group CEO Mr. Khaled Al Huraimel. “While the new fleet will be working on the streets and lagoons, we will be continuing to research other technologies that can further assist us to attain our sustainability objectives.”
