Madar (Nouakchott) - The governor of Nouakchott North, El Naji Ould Khatri, said on Saturday, 7 November 2026, that the administrative authorities will begin applying deterrent penalties next week against anyone caught in the act of dumping rubbish in the streets, according to the Mauritanian News Agency (AMI).
The announcement came during field visits by the governor to the region's districts to follow the intensive clean-up operation, in which civil society associations, neighbourhood committees and municipal workers are taking part. He said the campaign aims to change negative behaviour linked to cleanliness, and that after the President of the Republic inaugurated a package of projects, "it has become necessary to preserve and maintain them".
The mayor of Dar Naim, Oumoum Ould El Koutoub Ould Oumoum, said the municipality "will not be lenient" with people who dump waste in public places and will take the necessary measures against them, including fines.
The mayor of Toujounine, Ahmed Salem Ould El Filali, said civil society is cleaning the unpaved streets, while the municipality has required the cleaning company to clean all paved streets, adding that the municipality is working to remove the informal occupation of public spaces, one of the causes of rubbish piling up. Neighbourhood heads and civil society representatives attributed the build-up of rubbish over the past period, among other things, to weak oversight of cleaning operations, the agency said.
In Kaedi, the deputy governor of Gorgol, Mohamed Abdel Vettah Ahmed Hmeity, on Saturday launched the second phase of the comprehensive national clean-up drive in the city. Yahya Ould Agjil, the delegate of the Commission for Human Rights, Humanitarian Action and Relations with Civil Society, said the operation covers all of the city's neighbourhoods through local committees for supervision and awareness-raising, and that a meeting chaired by the governor of Gorgol will be held to draw up a permanent cleanliness plan based on involving residents, according to the same source.
