Waste Piles Accumulate in Rafah, Southern Gaza Strip, which is Crowded with Displaced People
(AWP) - The Rafah municipality authorities have warned of an “environmental disaster” in the southern Gaza Strip city due to the accumulation of heaps of solid waste exacerbated by the influx of internally displaced persons (IDPs) that have fled to the area because of the Israeli war on the Strip since October 7.
Mohamed Abu Mehisen, a sanitation supervisor in Rafah municipality, said that nearly 1.5 million IDPs have fled to Rafah, which has compounded the pressure on the team responsible for transporting the city’s solid waste.
He explained, “Nearly 350 to 400 tons of garbage are being transported amid the crisis of displaced people, with the largest numbers in the city of Rafah. In the past, only 50 tons of solid waste used to be transported. This enormous amount has increased the work on the municipality teams and caused challenges.”
He added, “We have a crisis of our own too due to a shortage of cleaning workers in Rafah as well as the severe shortage of diesel fuel for waste disposal vehicles.”
Abu Mehisen appealed to the authorities concerned to provide workers as well as waste-handling equipment and, what he described as the most important of all, the provision of diesel for waste disposal vehicles.
International organisations said the majority of the Gaza Strip’s total population of 2.3 million Palestinians are now living as IDPs amid harsh conditions due to the Israeli war that has been ongoing for almost four months.