The Kuwait Municipality have launched a campaign asking citizens to take photos of violations and send it to their social media accounts so they can fix the issues. They don’t mention the kinds of violations to report, but based on their instagram it looks like garbage related issues, abandoned cars, illegal banners and food related violations. To report an issue you’ll have to photograph the violation and then send it to their instagram or twitter accounts @kuwmun.
It’s a pretty great crowdsourcing initiative, but I just wish the process wasn’t so clumsy. A better solution would be a dedicated app like Deera. The Deera app allows you take photos, share the GPS location, mention what kind of issue you’re reporting and it doesn’t require you to have a social media account allowing you to remain anonymous. It would also make the municipality’s life easier since managing instagram messages isn’t the most practical thing in the world and instagram messaging lacks basic features such as flagging.
What I’d really love is an app like Metrash2 which allows citizens in Qatar to report traffic violations. Now that’s an app I’d have a lot of fun with.
11 replies on “Report Violations to the Baladia”
I cannot translate Arabic properly but is this facility specifically for citizens only?
How do I ‘send to their Instagram’?
Take a pic, upload on my Instagram and tag them? No ways.
Or a direct message?
What i’m really itching to report is-
1. Cars parked on the road in front of buildings on Amman street in the morning, effectively making the 2 lane street one lane- adding to the mad traffic chaos on school days.
2. A professional beggar (young man with a limp, but healthy otherwise), that i have spotted at multiple places all over Kuwait, and have confronted a couple of times, but he doesnt care.
I wonder if this new instagram account is the right platform to do it.
Again a unprofessional initiative from an already unprofessional institution. Hire your own inspectors, in charge of area’s, rotate them to ensure no one benefit from bribes and all area look the same.
Set a standard, work on a proper city plan. Listen to the actual users, as I am sure the man in charge is not using the public transportation nor sidewalks.
I would like to invite him for a walk in Salem Mubarak street tough… Let him trip and get run over.
Where does it say “citizens only” ?!
Citizens = inhabitants of Kuwait (different meaning from Kuwaiti citizen)
A citizen is a person with citizenship – membership in a sovereign political community such as a country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_(disambiguation)
seriously, you’re gonna use wikipedia over a dictionary to define the meaning of citizen? I know what citizen means and I’ve used it correctly but here are some sources for you:
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/citizen
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/citizen
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/citizen
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/citizen
https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/citizen
this is a really good first step, but for transparency reasons, i too think that they should go the app approach
being able to track the status of the complaint makes people trust the campaign and pressure the authorities to solve the issue
its in Arabic. there should be some graph mentioning how many people can read Arabic and how many can read English. this is the problem with most of the government sites. they have to see the population graph. and decide how many can read arabic and understand.
The non-national population of Kuwait is estimated as follows:
Indians, 825,000 – 10% can read arabic and 2% understand
Egyptians, 517,973 – almost all can read arabic and undestand
Bangladeshis, 181,265 – 80% can ready but 2% can understand
Syrians, 140,000 – almost all
Pakistanis, 126,000 – 10% can understand
Filipinos, 185,788 – 2% can understand
Sri Lankans, 130,000 – 1% can understand
Ethiopians, 74,000 – ???
Jordanian and Palestinian, 10,000 – almost all can understand
Nepalians, 62,000 – ??
Iranians, 50,000 – ??
Lebanese, 42,000 – almost all can understand
Indonesians, 8,887 – ??
Iraqis, 16,000 – almost all
Afghans, 15,000 – 10% i think
Americans, 13,000 (30,000 including armed forces) – 1% 😛
Yemeni, 11,000 – almost all can understand
if you see the above why kuwait dont want to understand they they have non-arabic – they have to do something for them also…
The muncipality instagram account doesn’t respond to any messages . And the person who answers the hotline, doesn’t understand english. Any whatsapp no. where muncipality complaints can be lodged?