Call to recycle water used for ablution at mosques

The water used for ablution at mosques around the country should be reused to irrigate plants and trees around these places of worship, suggested the Central Municipal Council (CMC) yesterday. Vice-chairman Hamad bin Lahdan al-Mohannadi raised the issue during the biweekly regular session.Such an initiative would also considerably reduce water wastage. Al-Mohannadi pointed out that among the advantage of this concept is to create a beautiful green cover. He suggested that this could be jointly implemented by the Ministry of Endowments - Awqaf and Islamic Affairs and the Ministry of Municipality and Environment (MME). CMC members hailed the suggestion and decided to refer it to the Services and Utilities Committee for more study and to produce detailed recommendations. Taking into consideration the prevailing economic blockade against Qatar, the council recommended that the MME and the Qatar General Organisation for Standards and Metrology (QGOSM) to temporarily waive the stipulation of the GCC standards for the imported goods and limit the accreditation to the Qatari or international standards only due to the difficulty of getting the GCC certification, which used to be obtained from Saudi Arabia. The QGOSM responded that it has held a number of meetings with importers and discussed the best ways to ease such procedures. The aim is to enable them to supply the consumers in the country with the necessary goods through a hassle-free process while stressing the quality of the imported products.  Besides, the council recommended that the expiry dates for the display and storage of tyres should be extended to three years instead of the current two years. The QGOSM should accordingly exert more efforts to raise the awareness of consumers that tyres are valid for use for up to five years from the date of manufacturing, depending on the conditions of storage. The CMC issued other recommendations asking the MME to study the possibility of setting up  a camel market and slaughterhouse at Dukhan and Abu Samra, at areas easily accessible to the camel farms that have been recently allocated to the herd owners. This would save camel owners the difficulties and the involved high cost of moving the animals to the main market in Doha and would reflect positively on the welfare of the livestock and animal wealth in the country.