It is unquestionably bizarre for governments to be eager to take on additional duties when their various departments already have more than enough to do. This is why I appreciate candor of the head of Jeddah’s traffic police when he denied that his men were overzealously searching people for banned mobile telephones with camera attachments and confiscating them. He said indirectly that this matter did not concern them. He is quite right — when the police have caught all the terrorists, thieves, those wanted for security issues and those who break traffic rules with fatal results, then they can be given such superfluous tasks.
What is even stranger though is the case of a Kuwaiti colleague whom his government removed from a plane and prevented from traveling. Why? Not because he was wanted for murder or for being a member of Al-Qaeda — but because he had not paid his telephone bill!
Of course it isn’t odd for an individual to be pursued, however trivial the charge may be but that a government department should, take on such tasks when there is no threat to public security or general welfare is certainly peculiar.
This is why I feel sorry for the custom officers in Saudi Arabia. The list of banned items that they must search for is long and constantly increasing. Mobile phones with camera attachments have recently been added to the list. Why? Because some people complained to the government that their wives were being photographed. The government then decided to put the mobiles on the list of prohibited items along with machine guns and heroin. Searching for these devices is now the task of the already overburdened customs officer — merely to protect a few women from troublemakers! The question is: what will people do when cameras are integral parts of all mobile telephones — a matter that is not far in the future?
I was standing in line once at passports control and around me people where complaining about the long wait. It turned out that an immigration officer was involved in a heated debate with a foreigner who was traveling out of the country because he hadn’t paid his rent. Again we pose the question, why is an immigration officer doing the job of a gopher when this is a problem between two independent parties, a matter that commercial curbs can guard against?
Logic dictates that governments lessen their degree of interference in people’s lives, let people get on with their jobs and cease getting embroiled in more prohibitions and pursuits. How can a government pursue customers for nonpayment of electricity, phone, water or cable bills or the rent on their house? Such follow-ups are the responsibility of the concerned company even if it is government-owned. It would be impossible to do so while also looking for murderers and other dangerous violators. If on the other hand government departments, such as customs or immigration, have no work to do — a better solution would be to let go the surplus employees and reduce the burden on the country’s budget!
