Many residents of this city are being overcharged by sewage tanker drivers who manipulate official prices and do not offer receipts which the municipality requires that they provide to customers. Residents who request tankers to remove sewage from their homes are often unaware that official prices have been established based on the size of the tanker. The company for which the drivers of the tankers work provides receipts that must be given to customers whenever sewage is removed from their residence. However, some drivers charge the customer more than the official price without offering the customer a receipt, and then write the official price on the receipt which they give to the company. This happens especially in those districts in the south and east of Jeddah which are suffering from the leakage of sewage in the streets. Mohammed Al-Yousef, a resident of Al-Nakheel district east of Jeddah, said that he paid a tanker driver SR 120 to remove sewage from his property as he thought that this was the price fixed by the mayoralty for a 12-ton tanker. Later, Al-Yousef discovered that the fixed price of a 12-ton tanker is SR100 and that the tanker driver had overcharged him. Al-Yousef did not ask for a receipt because he was not aware that tanker drivers were supposed to issue them. Jeddah mayoralty has fixed prices depending on the capacity of the tanker. According to the media center of the mayoralty, the services of a 12-ton tanker costs a customer SR100, a 19-ton tanker SR130 and a 29-ton tanker, which is the largest, SR150 for each trip. Tankers drivers told Saudi Gazette that the main reason they increase prices is the long distance from the north to the south of Jeddah where they dump sewage, especially after the decision by Jeddah municipality that all dumping in the Misk Lake dam east of the city be transferred to Al-Khurma dam south of Jeddah. “I spend more than two hours collecting, transporting and dumping one load of sewage in the Al-Khurma dam. My supervisor has ordered me to make four to five trips per day, otherwise he will fire me,” Mohammad Idrees , a Somali tanker driver, told Saudi Gazette. Idrees added that sometimes he has to wait for a long time in order to dump the load of sewage because of the large number of tankers waiting to gain access to Al-Khurma dam. Furthermore, residents in those areas plagued by sewage problems told Saudi Gazette that tanker drivers are often offered tips by customers so that they will come back quickly when needed.
