Officials said the Ministry of Public Works entered the final stage of repairing the Mishref sewage plant after they successfully installed a steel plug into the main drainage unit of the plant in order to block the flow of sewage water. This was done in order to allow for maintenance operations to take place so that the plant can go back into service. Meanwhile, sources from the Cabinet said they hoped that the success of this operation would eventually lead to the "shutdown" of political attacks
directed against Minister Dr Fadhel Safar.

Safar said that the operations that took place on Saturday night for 10 straight hours were planned over the past few days. He said that precautions were taken in order to prevent the flooding of sewage waters, adding a similar plan is being considered to be taken on sewage plants all over the country to prevent similar crises from taking place in the future.

Furthermore, Safar said that damage assessment will be conducted while the process of transporting the sewage waters by tankers will continue in addition to the monitoring of pollution levels in the sea. He talked about the steel plug and said that it was specially designed for this purpose. It uses a hydraulic system to block the access of water.

Also, Safar said that the preliminary reports of the Environment Public Authority (EPA) indicated that the marine pollution levels are decreasing after pollution was successfully controlled, Al-Rai reported.

Meanwhile, State Minister of Cabinet Affairs, Roudhan Al-Roudhan, commended the efforts made by the minister and his ministry's teams in containing the crisis and fixing them promptly, adding that the government is committed to providing full support that will lead to ending this problem.

In addition, Al-Roudhan addressed the demands that called for Safar's resignation, stating that while the Cabinet appreciated the notifications of MPs as part of their Constitutional right of freedom of opinion, they still appreciated the efforts that the minister has provided since the beginning of the crisis, which included forming an internal investigations committee separate from that formed by the Cabinet in order to look into the situation.

An unpublished report set to be issued by a local environmental organization has reportedly accused the Ministry of Public Works of dumping raw sewage into the rainwater drainage system, which leads directly to the sea, for more than seven years, thus causing persistent problems for Kuwait's offshore environment.

The accusations contained in the report were unrelated to the recent Mishref sewage plant crisis, with the unnamed environmental group also accusing the ministry of failing to utilize millions of dinars in funding that was allocated to it for sewage network repairs in order to prevent further dumping of raw sewage at sea.

A MPW official criticized the ministry's management, saying that the administration there had attempted for years to fool the public into believing that the dumping of raw sewage had been discontinued, in the full knowledge that in reality it was continuing.

The official said that using the rainwater drainage network for raw sewage had caused immense damage to the network since it is not designed to cope with this sort of matter and volume, leading to large quantities of public money being wasted on ever-greater amounts of maintenance work to repair and maintain the network.

The ministry insider also said that locations in Khaitan and Jleeb Al-Shuyoukh had been used to store sewage before dumping it into the rainwater drainage network, indicating that the volume of sewage collected in these areas was immense, with the populations there exceeding that in most areas. This should give an idea of the volume of pollution involved, the official said, adding that this has caused tremendous problems to the marine environment off Kuwait.

The official also accused the Environment Public Authority (EPA) and the parliamentary environment committee of being negligent in performing their duties, reported Al-Rai. The principal reason behind these issue persisting for years is these bodies' failure to make any efforts to prevent these serious violations of the country's health and security, the official added.

Kuwaittimes