Monday column: Why not an award for cleanest town in Oman?

Monday column: Why not an award for cleanest town in Oman?

A truck drove past on the road and left behind a continuous stream of thick black smoke that hanged in the air for quite a long time.

The people who were walking on the beach embankment started to cough and the rest stopped and closed their noses with their hands. Even the seagulls who were flying low diverted their flights to another direction.

But that was not all. A long queue of cars were also contributing to bad pollution that evening. I wondered what the local environmentalists would say if they were there to watch it. Would they have sympathised with people like us trying to exercise in the ‘clean’ air?

I guess it is all about modern living and the environmentalists have a perfect excuse for it. They would say we need cars to move around and heavy vehicles to carry goods. But again it is not the pollution in the streets of Muscat only. Outside the capital, think about the factories, workshops, oil rigs that push out all the carbonized air out in the open.

There is nothing we can do about it but tolerate it when you want to live in the city or places where the industries are. People who