Regional municipalities are intensifying their efforts to prevent land encroachment and reduce construction waste.

The regional secretariats continue their efforts to preserve government lands and public property and protect them from encroachments, improve the visual landscape, and obligate contractors to clean construction sites of the effects of construction waste, while applying the municipal penalties and fines regulations, and implementing what the state has approved in this regard without leniency, and applying deterrent penalties against violators.

The efforts of the Jeddah Governorate Secretariat to eliminate slums and prevent encroachments resulted in the recovery of more than 3.9 million square meters of government land during the past three months, within the scope of 6 sub-municipalities, and an emphasis on intensifying monitoring work to ensure that the illegal developments do not return again.

During the second quarter of this year 2022, the Asir Region Municipality and its affiliated municipalities recovered more than 2.7 million square meters of encroached government land. The municipality indicated in a statistical report it issued that in the past three months a total of 2,728,838 square meters of encroached land were recovered in a number of governorates and cities of the Asir region.

The Holy Capital Municipality, represented by its sub-municipalities and in cooperation with the security authorities, recently removed a number of encroachments in residential neighborhoods, including Wadi Jalil, Bathaa Quraish, and Al-Fayha, after the municipality had issued notices and warnings after verifying that the encroachers did not have legal documents or proper building permits.

In the Eastern Province, the municipality, in cooperation with the Sand Extraction Committee, which consists of several government agencies, seized 11 trucks, 18 shovels, two bulldozers, and two excavators last month. These vehicles were working to excavate land and extract sand in a number of prohibited locations within the region. The campaigns resulted in the seizure of all equipment, the summoning of the owners of those trucks and equipment, and the completion of legal procedures against the violators.

In a related context, the Public Prosecution clarified through the Public Utilities Protection System that it is prohibited to deliberately damage any of the extensions or facilities of public utilities, or to deliberately cut them off or disrupt them, whether the perpetrator is the principal or an accomplice, stressing that the penalties reach imprisonment for a period of up to “two years” and a fine of up to 100,000 riyals, or one of these two penalties, with the publication of the text of the penalty ruling at the expense of the violator in a local newspaper or any other means.

The Ministry of Municipality and Housing, in cooperation with the regional secretariats, aims to raise the level of compliance and improve the urban landscape in all regions of the Kingdom, by monitoring 30 violations, the most prominent of which are the failure to fence construction sites, mixing cement on sidewalks and streets, and dumping construction waste on other people’s lands or public places. The violations also include the failure to remove construction, demolition or restoration waste, damaging paved and asphalted streets when using construction equipment, transporting soil from places not designated for that purpose, and not cleaning the site during and after work is completed.